MatchPoint and options and Wombat, oh my!

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: MatchPoint, Options, TransactTools

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Wanted to highlight three significant pieces in the current Securities Industry News and/or its Web site, SecuritiesIndustry.com, about three significant developments at NYSE Euronext on the options, bonds and technology sides. (Both the print version and the Web site are subscriber-only; the site does offer some articles on a free-registration basis.)

NYSE Readies MatchPoint; Reports Record Volumes~FlexTrade EMS will provide access to point-in-time trading facility (no link available) Excerpt:

NYSE expects to begin accepting orders on Jan. 22 for its MatchPoint after-hours cross, at 4:45 p.m., which will differ from competitors' point-in-time matching facilities by allowing member firms to enter portfolio-based orders that will also interact with large individual block orders. By the end of the first quarter, the exchange anticipates rolling out intraday crosses starting at 9:45 and proceeding on the hour throughout the day.

MatchPoint's introduction precedes that of NYSE's yet-to-be-named joint venture with the Bids alternative trading system (ATS), a dark book owned by a consortium of large Wall Street firms. That initiative will provide market participants with the ability to match large orders anonymously, much like Bids' current offering, as well as interact with NYSE's publicly displayed book. It is expected to start up by midyear.

"By offering MatchPoint and our recently announced joint venture with Bids, we're providing investors two new, complementary ways to trade block orders," said Lawrence Leibowitz, head of U.S. products, in a statement.

Aside: speaking of MatchPoint, our marketing team just sent out a reminder to the industry about the Jan. 22 launch. Are you ready? If not, here is a link to more information, or contact your relationship manager or the MatchPoint team.

Arca Options, 'Market-Structure Leader' Excerpt:

Introduced in August 2006, NYSE Arca Options has been a major beneficiary of the options market's steadily rising volumes. Based on the all-electronic equities platform that NYSE Euronext acquired with Archipelago Holdings in March 2006, NYSE Arca's share of daily transaction volume was at 16.3 percent last month, up from 14.6 percent in December 2006. It typically ranks third in options market share, behind the International Securities Exchange and Chicago Board Options Exchange.

"NYSE Arca was the fastest-growing U.S. equity options exchange in 2007, with a 60 percent growth rate, compared to the industry average of 30 percent," notes NYSE Arca Options VP Edward Boyle. "We have plans in place for 2008 to leverage that momentum by implementing new functionalities, new products and order types, and continuing to attract new participants."

NYSE Euronext Signs $200 Million Deal for Wombat (By Alexa Jaworski -- she's back!) -- Excerpt:

Wombat has “grown tremendously over the last three or four years, and it was clear that there was an opportunity to get our core technologies in front of a much broader set of customers,” said Wombat chief executive Danny Moore in an interview. “Customers were feeling a lot of pressure around things like total cost of ownership in light of exponentially increasing data volumes. We were looking for strategies that would allow us to deliver bigger solutions but in doing so bring down the total cost of ownership.”

Wombat, which was founded in 1997, has 140 employees and offices in Incline Village, Nev., Chicago, London, Belfast and Tokyo. The company says it has more than 100 global customers, including the world’s 12 largest financial firms. It had $28 million in revenues last year, up 124 percent from 2006.

Moore emphasized that Wombat will remain “intact and highly productive” and “will continue to be a very aggressive technology company.”

Have a groovy Tuesday. Mining a little history, On This Day (NYTimes.com):

-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929. We close the market next Monday -- the national holiday -- in honor of the great man.

-- In 1967, the Green Bay Packers won the first Super Bowl, beating the Kansas City Chiefs, 34-10. I was a kid at the time and the Pack always seemed to win and seemed so iconic -- Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Vince Lombardi -- that I became a lifelong Packer fan. May they do it again this year.

-- Speaking of icons, different field: the great jazz drummer Gene Krupa (1909-1973) also was born today.