Tora Targets Expansion of TORA Crosspoint after Successful Japan Launch
Online, June 2, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Hong Kong - 2 June 2010: Tora, Asia's leading provider of advanced trading technology and financial services, is expanding TORA Crosspoint to cover new markets, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, following the successful launch of the service for Japan.
TORA Crosspoint is an off-exchange liquidity venue comprised of Tora's substantial internal liquidity flow and the aggregation of liquidity from multiple venues in Asia, such as broker crossing engines and third-party pools. TORA Crosspoint provides the trading community with a central point of access to multiple off-exchange liquidity venues without requiring any changes to their existing workflow.
TORA Crosspoint was launched for Japan in February 2010 leveraging the internal liquidity that crosses at Tora. Equity crossing venues including Credit Suisse's Crossfinder, Japannext and Kabu.com have recently linked to TORA Crosspoint, creating access to broad liquidity in the region. Several additional partners are expected to connect to TORA Crosspoint over the next few months.
"TORA Crosspoint is unique in that it seeks liquidity in parallel with the user's everyday order flow. This is a breakthrough for traders in Asia who previously had to manually post their order flow, often resulting in low crossing rates and poor user experience," said Robert Dykes, CEO of Tora. "In addition, TORA Crosspoint offers the ability to bring together leading crossing engines and pools, so traders have broad access to off-exchange liquidity with an easy-to-use experience."
TORA Crosspoint currently captures over 4% of total trading volume of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. TORA Crosspoint offered over $1.5 billion of daily liquidity in over 1,800 individual equities during the first quarter 2010.
"The alternative trading market in Asia continues to develop, creating sufficient demand to warrant the connection of Crossfinder with a service like TORA Crosspoint to combine our liquidity sources," said Brook Teeter, head of Client Trading & Execution Sales for Asia Pacific at Credit Suisse. "It's all about choice and providing the buy-side trader with additional tools to help improve execution, ultimately reducing trading costs."
"The success of TORA Crosspoint for Japan provides us with the confidence to roll-out the service across the region, starting with Hong Kong securities in the second quarter and Singapore and Australia later in the year," Robert Dykes added.
The decision to expand TORA Crosspoint comes after the announcement in February that Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS), made a minority investment in Tora. Tora will use the proceeds from the investment to accelerate expansion.
For further information, please contact:
HONG KONG
Damien Ryan +852 6302 6922 damien@ryanfin.com
SAN FRANCISCO
Maryam Aflak +1 415 546 2266 maflak@toratrading.com
About Tora Holdings
Tora is Asia's leading provider of advanced trading technology and financial services. Tora's unrivalled solutions span the entire trading process, offering a full suite of trade execution capabilities in markets across Asia, North America and Europe. Tora's high-performance EMS/OMS has been designed from the ground up by traders, and is currently used by traders at hedge funds, long-only funds and sell-side proprietary trading desks. Tora also provides clients with access to its unique liquidity pools including Asia's leading non-displayed matching engine. Tora's dedicated Asia trading desk delivers to buy-side clients unmatched Asia expertise and extensive analytics focused on best execution. Tora's extensive suite of proprietary algorithms (trading and strategy-focused) is fully customizable and broker neutral. Tora has over 175 employees dedicated to Asia, with offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Additional information is available at www.tora.com.
Tora Trading Services, TORA, TORA Crosspoint and the Tora logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Tora Holdings, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.