By Tiffany Uffleman, Senior Marketing Manager, IPC
It was a cool, windy and cloudy evening in Chicago. They don’t call it the Windy City for nothing. Inside the Bohemian House Restaurant a large crowd was engaged in lively conversation creating a tremendous energy in the air. Though the weather provided fodder for attendees to indulge in small talk, exciting market topics were discussed, including the changing FX trading landscape and investors seeking new sources of liquidity.
Broker dealers, exchanges, hedge funds, market data providers and financial technology firms were also in attendance to celebrate IPC’s new collaboration with SGX and CME to provide North American market participants with direct connectivity into Asian markets through IPC’s managed Point-of-Presence (PoP) in Aurora, Illinois.
With increasing demand among institutional investors, asset managers, hedge funds and market makers to securely and quickly access markets in the Asia-Pacific region, collaborations such as these have become important and mutually beneficial as liquidity venues are establishing local hubs to make international markets more accessible and broaden their footprint. At the same time, the investment community is looking for new ways to generate alpha, source liquidity, diversify portfolios, mitigate risk and manage trading costs.
Investment firms increasingly need reliable, cost-effective connectivity throughout the trade lifecycle across asset classes to a diverse ecosystem of market participants to enable them to reach beyond their core counterparties and capture new market opportunities. This broad connectivity requirement is particularly important considering the current backdrop of global political uncertainty, market fragmentation, new trading protocols and changing regulations that are all impacting the nature of liquidity provisioning, especially during times of stressed markets.
IPC’s recently launched Global Exchange Reach solution, a premier, industry-leading connectivity solution that enables exchanges, alternative trading systems (ATSs), multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) and other liquidity venues to attract order flow and distribute market data in new geographies, helps address these industry connectivity needs.
IPC’s Financial Markets Network interconnects global financial centers and allows access to more than +7,000 market participant locations across 700 cities in more than 60 countries. Global Exchange Reach is part of the IPC Financial Markets Network portfolio which also includes Connexus Extranet, Connexus Ethernet, Connexus WAN, Connexus Voice and Trader Voice services. Market participants interested in speaking to IPC’s subject matter experts can schedule a meeting with us at the conference or email us. We also encourage you to follow us on Twitter @IPC_Systems_Inc or LinkedIn.
