RiverCross ATS Selects SunGard's Brass to Power Dark Pool

6  from  Automated Trader Magazine

June 11th, 2008 - SunGard Customers Given Access to Dark Venue

RiverCross ATS has selected SunGard's Brass infrastructure to host its fully-automated dark pool servicing sell-side providers. The connection to RiverCross will give customers of SunGard’s Brass direct connectivity to a unique pool of dark liquidity and another option to execute order flow before quoting in displayed markets. RiverCross ATS, launched in May of 2008, is a matching platform that offers continuous crossing services for both block and non- block orders in a secure environment, running in a high-availability, fault-tolerant mode. SunGard’s Brass is an integrated trade order, execution and compliance management solution supporting Nasdaq, listed, listed market making and sales trading for sell-side institutions.

SunGard’s hosting services will provide RiverCross with a cost-effective, low-latency, reliable and scalable infrastructure. Integration with Brass will help drive order flow from Brass’s deep customer base of over 130 sell-side institutions to RiverCross’ optimized liquidity and low-impact execution.'

"The growth in dark pool usage has been tremendous, from less than one percent of equity order flow five years ago to about 8% today," said Larry Tabb, founder and chief executive officer of TABB Group. "Dark pools allow traders to execute larger blocks without leaking information providing larger investors with lower cost executions. While the field is getting crowded, dark pools with the lowest latency, the least information leakage, and the highest match rate will do well."

Paul Onderdonk of RiverCross, said, “SunGard has demonstrated reliability in providing hosted applications for US equities and listed options trading, which ultimately led us to launch using SunGard’s Brass.”

Raj Mahajan, president of SunGard’s trading business, said, “We are pleased that RiverCross has chosen SunGard for the mission-critical role of hosting and providing a reliable infrastructure to power its new alternative trading site. This relationship offers a value-added service to our customers by providing increased access to a dark pool that is expected to have a high degree of system uptime and scalability.”