Multi-asset electronic trading solutions provider smartTrade has acquired TickTrade Systems in a move to expand the range of FX trading products available for clients.
TickTrade will fall under the smartTrade brand as both companies provide liquidity management solutions and FX trading systems that enable financial institutions to develop and run high-performance trading platforms throughout the world.
The deal has expanded smartTrade’s client base across North America, Europe, and Asia, who will benefit from a new and complementary SaaS, electronic FX trading offering, from smartTrade’s connectivity, aggregation, and risk management technology to TickTrade’s analytics, payments, and advanced distribution technology.
TickTrade co-founders, Baha Ohcebol and Alexander Culiniac, will maintain senior management roles within the combined business, while also remaining significant investors in the group, and will report to smartTrade’s Chief Executive Officer David Vincent.
Hg will remain the majority investor in smartTrade, along with longstanding investors Keensight and Pléiade Venture.
David Vincent, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder at smartTrade Group, said: “For both smartTrade and TickTrade customers, the combination is extremely compelling. It brings two industry-leading technologies together – one complementing the other, creating a unique breadth and depth of product capabilities.”
Baha Ohcebol, Co-Founder of TickTrade, said: “This is great news for TickTrade customers. To have the backing of smartTrade and Hg means we can significantly build on and continue to innovate the products we know our clients highly value. This also offers further opportunities for product collaboration, wider distribution and cutting-edge innovation – meaning we can bring even better services to even more clients.”
Alexander Culiniac, Co-Founder of TickTrade, said: “This is great news for TickTrade’s customers who have supported us and for employees who have worked so hard to build the business to this stage since we first founded TickTrade back in 2013. smartTrade is a highly innovative company and this next move in the business’ history supports our vision to be the premier integrated trading technology partner for financial institutions, providing innovative and world-class solutions across all asset classes.”
smartTrade has recently extended its partnership with SBI Liquidity, one of the major FX infrastructure and liquidity providers in Japan in order to include crypto trading operations both in the retail and institutional segments.
For SBI, this means that it has to move its trading facility into smartTrade’s Tokyo data center to ensure the availability of liquidity and streaming reliably and also to help make the job of monitoring and maintenance much easier.
These 2 companies have been partners since 2013 with each company choosing the other for different features and products as far as liquidity, pricing, infrastructure, and distribution is concerned and this new partnership is just one step ahead in their growth as close partners and this comes at the right time for SBI as it looks to cater to the increasing demand for crypto liquidity.
