Calastone Limited, the independent cross-border transaction network for the mutual funds industry, announced today a strategic expansion to offer equities trading for its mutual fund participants. From today, Instinet Europe, the European agency brokerage subsidiary of Instinet Incorporated, a global leader in electronic trading and agency-only brokerage services, is the first equities broker connected to Calastone.
Participants are now able to process both mutual fund and equities transactions through a single point of connection with Calastone whatever their preferred messaging standard or protocol and without any additional investment technology. As mutual fund orders have become electronic, so too can Calastone now eliminate any manual equities trading for participants, helping them improve their overall trading efficiencies. By transacting with Instinet Europe and taking advantage of its sophisticated brokerage services including smart order routing, algorithmic trading tools, direct market access and sales trading, participants can be confident that they will be meeting their regulatory best execution requirements.
As with the mutual fund community, Calastone’s membership fee free basis, and low tariff pricing model, is enabling the fund distribution community to significantly reduce cost and operational risk. Irrespective of their preferred method of connectivity, messaging protocol or standards, all Calastone participants enjoy straight through processing regardless of their size or technology capabilities. In addition, transactions can now be tracked and exceptions managed on a real-time basis via the Calastone EMS.
Commenting on the expansion, Kevin Lee, Managing Director of Calastone said, “We are delighted to welcome Instinet Europe as our first equities brokerage participant. We believe in a model whereby participants will be able to execute all of their client orders, regardless of asset class, through a single platform and we will continue to add additional message types and assets classes as clients demand them. This single connection approach by which to trade an ever-wider range of asset classes will continue to add value to the mutual fund community and help drive costs down.
Richard Balarkas, CEO of Instinet Europe Limited added, “We are pleased to be reaching the mutual fund community via Calastone. For some forty years now we have been pioneers in electronic equities trading and support any effort to improve transaction efficiencies. We can see there is huge potential for the mutual fund industry to embrace STP as this will only benefit the end customer.”
Julia Streets / Abby Munson
Streets Consulting
+44 (0)20 7959 2235
