Beeks
Financial Cloud and Velocimetrics have appointed industry veteran Matthew Cretney as the head of product management, where he will leverage the combined companies’ unique position to provide independent real-time monitoring for the significant increases in data volumes which the industry is seeing, at greatly reduced operating costs.
The increasing proliferation of venues and diversity of trading platforms within the FX market makes accurate monitoring a competitive differentiator for market Beeks acquired Velocimetrics in April 2020, which allowed the firms to combine Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for low-latency with tracking and real-time, in-stream performance analytics. Velocimetrics has recently released a modular, software-only approach to monitoring and analytics of 100Gbps network feeds for exchanges and trading companies across the globe.
Cretney has spent decades working in FinTech and infrastructure, with most of those years spent with Reuters/Refinitiv. He was the technical product lead for Refinitiv’s SaaS multi-tenant white-labeled FX eTrading capability and oversaw the development of Refinitiv’s FX Spot and Forwards Matching services.
“It’s a recurring theme in technology: when a solution or an established methodology appears to have run its course, the next new technology appears and quickly takes the lead over established legacy systems or approaches. With the ongoing investment in the Velocimetrics product set, Beeks and Velocimetrics are demonstrating a better, faster, cheaper answer to an increasingly complex set of requirements and I want to be part of that new future”, said Cretney. “Velocimetrics’ real-time network performance analytics, together with Beeks’ innovative financial cloud are a very powerful combination.”
Gordon McArthur, CEO of Beeks, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Matthew to our team and for him to lead our product management. Matthew brings a valuable depth of knowledge and experience to Beeks. But, even more importantly, he is well-aware of the frustrations and limitations across the FinTech sector and shares our vision of developing and supporting significant change for the better. In Matthew, we have a real asset joining Beeks, and I look forward to seeing his contribution to our growth and development.”
Velocimetrics continues to operate as a distinct entity and Steve Colwill, CEO of Velocimetrics, will join the Beeks Group operations board with special responsibility for product development and mergers and acquisitions.
In 2019, Velocimetrics reduced tick-to-trade latency by 90%, from 100μs microseconds) to 10μs using the Napatech SmartNIC FPGA-based solution. In 2018, Velocimetrics appointed John Benini and Steve O’Brien to help expand its footprint among investment banks, international hedge funds, and exchanges in the United States and Canada.
