Bonds.com, which provides an online trading platform for execution, liquidity and competitive pricing to the fragmented fixed income marketplace, has updated its BondStation platform to provide continuous intra-day updates on the underlying ratings of insured municipal bonds assigned by credit rating agencies.

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Tradeweb’s addition of cash deposits in five currencies to its multidealer trading platform is aimed at bringing speed, transparency and processing efficiency to what has traditionally been a telephone-based and labour-intensive business.

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Nyfix, which is acquiring UK based FIXCity – a specialist in web-based electronic trading and liquidity discovery solutions – is looking to deliver a unique liquidity discovery solution by combining its IOI workflow expertise with FIXCity’s front end technology. This, claims the company, will enable clients to swiftly capitalise on trading opportunities.

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Instinet has launched Instinet Execution Experts, a suite of algorithms incorporating best-of-breed components of Instinet’s previous algorithmic offering with Nomura’s former U.S. strategies. The release represents the first major fruits of the combination of two since the U.S. firm’s acquisition by Nomura in 2006 (Electronic Trading, November 2006).

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Citi is acquiring an undisclosed minority equity stake in electronic fixed income platform TradeWeb. The US bank will take a seat on the TradeWeb board, joining the nine other Wall Street dealers that paid $180 million for a minority stake in the platform last year (Electronic Trading, October 2007). The nine dealers had initially sold TradeWeb to Thomson Financial in April 2004.

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Fidessa has tailored its European trading solution to cater for the high levels of interest it has received in its trading solution from both local Italian and international financial institutions impacted by the forthcoming merger between the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Borsa Italiana.

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The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) has revealed that a six millisecond median response time has been consistently achieved since the rollout of its ‘Quantum Revolution’ platform for a clutch of securities trading on the new system. The current trading engine has a capacity of 47 million orders per day with a full load of issues from Toronto Stock Exchange. Market capacity tests have proven TSX Quantum capacity to this threshold, with “economically viable scalability” to one billion orders per day.

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Financial software house Argo SE, has released a new version of Argo Exchange Simulator (SimEx), featuring higher performance, “one-cancel-the-other” and “if-done” order combinations.

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Some two months after Tradeweb, the OTC multi-asset class online marketplace, closed a deal that saw nine investment banks taking a significant stake in the Thomson Financial-owned firm, it has confirmed that six new global dealers have begun trading US dollar interest rate swaps on its multi-dealer system.

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Orc Software, provider of technology for advanced derivatives trading and connectivity solutions, has released Orc Version 7.0, which includes enhancements such as greater performance, flexibility and liquidity access, according to the vendor.

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Eurobase has released NDF (Non Deliverable Forward) functionality within its Siena e-Trading Solution. NDF functionality has been supported within the Siena core application for a number of years and following customer demand, Eurobase has extended this to its Siena e-Trading Solution. The Siena NDF price streaming capability extends to any multi-bank platform, trading platform or channel that supports this functionality via off the shelf or bespoke adaptors provided by Eurobase, according to the vendor.

An Italian investment firm and established Orc Software customer, Centrosim, is using Orc technology for its single platform-based automated trading and risk management solution. Centrosim is utilising Orc Trading technology tools including Orc Trader and via Orc Connect, market connections for the Italian Derivatives Market, Italian Stock Exchange, Securitised Derivatives Exchange and the Mercato Alternativo del Capitale. Plans are also under way for non-membership market access via Orc Connect to SEB for the major European and North American financial markets (Euronext.liffe, Eurex and CME-CBOT).

TSX Group says its planned new high velocity order book will enable “vertical and horizontal” scalability, and provide choice for algorithmic, black box and high frequency traders. Code-named TSX Photon, the new order book will be launched next year and will run alongside the Canadian exchange’s Quantum central limit order book.

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Fidessa group says five clients have already signed for its fully hosted Canadian trading platform. The Canadian hosted trading platform was launched in January 2007 and was developed to meet client demand for a hosted solution based on the same foundations as Fidessa’s enterprise Canadian trading platform. The hosted platform combines electronic order and execution workflow along with real-time, multi-currency trading, position keeping and reporting.

While debate raged at SIFMA’s third annual e-trading conference in London as to whether fragmentation is a good or bad development in the fixed income e-trading marketplace, LiquidityHub CEO Robert MacLeod argues that it’s “not so much fragmentation as choice” facing the different target markets, and the end goal is the same even if different models exist.

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The Russian Trading System (RTS) says from the start of March it introduced a new version of its trading system, the so-called Plaza - 8.55.

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The acquisition by MarketAxess of FIX software specialist Greenline will help it diversify beyond its core electronic trading business and gives it access to a new pool of clients. The fixed income electronic trading platform provider also hopes Greenline will give it a route to expand into electronic connectivity beyond bonds into other asset types including equities and exchange-traded options, futures and commodities.

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Standard Chartered Bank is now offering the ability to trade foreign exchange via its application programming interface (API), providing FIX connectivity (Financial Information eXchange) with introductory access to 360T (TEX).

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BNY ConvergEx Group has enhanced Perform-Ex, its real-time, web-based transaction cost analysis platform, to offer improved intra-trade functionality, which allows clients to monitor real-time performance and execution for all algorithmic orders routed to ConvergEx.

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Fidessa group says five clients have already signed for its fully hosted Canadian trading platform. The Canadian hosted trading platform was launched in January 2007 and was developed to meet client demand for a hosted solution based on the same foundations as Fidessa’s enterprise Canadian trading platform. The hosted platform combines electronic order and execution workflow along with real-time, multi-currency trading, position keeping and reporting.