STOCKHOLM, Sweden, January 16, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- OM and BrokerTec have signed a new and extended agreement to further strengthen the cooperation between the two companies.
The initial agreement between OM and BrokerTec, announced in December 1999, encompassed OM supplying BrokerTec with electronic, inter-dealer trading platforms for US Treasuries and Euro-denominated sovereign debt. The exchanges went live in June 2000 with opening hours of 15.5 hours. During 18 months of successful operations, extensive new functionality and several new instrument classes have been added to the system. Also, BrokerTec's market operation hours for the US Cash market have been extended to 22 hours to enable the Japanese market to trade on the same system. In addition, a new platform - BrokerTec Futures Exchange ("BTEX") - for US financial futures was successfully launched on November 30, 2001. Since beginning commercial operations, BrokerTec has traded in excess of 20 trillion USD on its platform. The recent agreement is a further strengthening of the relationship between OM and BrokerTec with regards to an enhanced and strengthened Support Service agreement, and a closer cooperation regarding the design and development of the systems.
"The new agreement with BrokerTec reinforces our strategy to develop long-term technology partnerships with leading players in the world's financial markets," says Magnus Bocker, Chief Operating Officer at OM. "It is also an important step for us in gaining marketshare in the U.S. and the global fixed-income technology market. Furthermore it acknowledges our capacity to provide robust high-availability platform technology - resulting in significant cost efficiencies and a competitive edge to our clients."
"We are pleased with the solid product that OM has helped us to build and with the high capacity, highly reliable platform and network that is operated for BrokerTec," said Hal Hinkle, CEO and President of BrokerTec Global LLC.
BrokerTec Global is a fully electronic inter-dealer broker of fixed income securities that was formed by a consortium of some of the world's leading financial services companies. Shareholders include: ABN Amro, Banco Santander, Barclays Capital, Citigroup/Salomon Smith Barney, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank AG, Dresdner Bank AG, Goldman Sachs, Greenwich Capital Markets, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS Warburg . Announced in June 1999, BrokerTec's mission is to provide fast, reliable, cost- effective execution and straight-through processing services to the world's fixed income wholesale trading community. For more information, please visit www.btec.com
OM is the world's leading provider of transaction technology to the financial services and energy industries, developing and marketing software that increases the efficiency of financial and energy markets throughout the world. OM has over 100 customers in 20 countries worldwide. The Company also owns and operates exchanges and has operations in ten countries. OM is listed on Stockholmsborsen. For more information, please visit www.om.com.
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