Global Trading System more commonly referred to as GTS – the largest designated market maker on New York Stock Exchange has now signed an agreement with another US-based financial service provider Cantor Fitzgerald. This deal facilitates GTS to completely acquire Cantor Fitzgerald’s ETF and wholesale OTC market making divisions in a mutually beneficial deal.
Cantor Fitzgerald is a NY based financial service provider which operates in investment banking, prime brokerage services and provides broker-dealer service for equities, US government bonds, fixed income securities, and currencies aside from ETF and OTC market making services. As a part of this deal, 30 Cantor Fitzgerald personnel who worked in its ETF & OTC market making division will migrate to GTS as the firm’s employees according to the media update released by GTS earlier this week.
The ETF business dealt with trades placed by both retail clients and exchanges. This division will be led by Reginald Browne along with Eric Lichtenstein and Darren Taube as his partners. Meanwhile, the OTC market making division will be handled by Joe Pleffner, Mike Strashnov, and Menash Cohen while at Cantor, Fitzgerald only handles the execution of stock and ETF traders for retail investors and is likely to continue unchanged at GTS. As part of this deal, in exchange for the acquisition of the two above mentioned division, GTS is providing Cantor Fitzgerald with proprietary algorithms which are focused on trading in commodities, futures, forex, and derivatives around the world. The acquisition of the two divisions from Cantor Fitzgerald puts GTS in line with market heavyweights such as Citadel and Virtu when looked at the firm’s capacity to handle trades from retail brokerages.
Currently, in the U.S. market, Global Trading System trades in securities only with licensed and registered brokers and dealers. The trading activities of the firm are done under the banner of GTS Securities, LLC which is recognised as a broker-dealer service provider and member of FINRA. Aside from the U.S.A, the company also serves as a market maker on for numerous exchanges in North America and Western Europe. When speaking about this deal with Cantor Fitzgerald, Ari Rubenstein, co-founder, and CEO of GTS, was quoted saying, “We are extremely excited about the opportunity to provide our clients with industry-leading execution services and premier client service. The GTS offering creates a new standard that will unite technology and capital deployment to create efficiency across asset classes. Investors around the world can now leverage the very best in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and execution technology to help them save money whenever they trade and invest”.
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