BWI: Citi Partners with NSE to Launch the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) Protocol

Press release from Business Wire India
Source: Citi
Wednesday, June 02, 2010 03:55 PM IST (10:25 AM GMT)
Editors: General: Consumer interest; Business: Advertising, PR & marketing, Banking & financial services, Business services, Financial Analyst, Information technology, Stock exchanges; Technology
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Citi Partners with NSE to Launch the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) Protocol
First Brokerage House in India to Go-Live with FIX

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India and Hong Kong S.A.R, Wednesday, June 02, 2010 -- (Business Wire India) -- Citigroup Global Markets today announced that it is the first brokerage house in India to launch the next generation industry-driven messaging standard - Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol adopted by the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE).

"Citi is proud to bring the next generation of messaging standard to India in collaboration with NSE," said Kumar Goradia, Head of India Equity Technology at Citi. "FIX capitalizes on Citi's state-of-the-art technology and extensive global trading expertise. It is designed to improve the efficiency of India's equity markets while bringing together our global capabilities under a single platform, Mr. Goradia added."

The internationally recognized standard FIX has been extensively tested by Citigroup for the last six months in collaboration with NSE, the first exchange to implement this protocol in India. The platform offers cutting edge execution to use the protocol to transact in an electronic, transparent, cost efficient and timely manner.

On the launch of FIX, Vidhu Shekhar, Vice President, New Products, National Stock Exchange (NSE), said "Support for FIX is an important part of NSE's efforts to improve throughput and efficiency of pre-trade message processing. We expect the use of FIX messages to become widespread in all market segments. We congratulate Citi on being the first to go live with FIX in India."

With the successful implementation of this standard, Citigroup Global Markets can now deploy new trading technologies in India for its institutional trading clients quicker and at lower costs.

Indian exchanges introduced electronic trading around 15 years ago using proprietary data standards for interfacing with broker trading systems. NSE calls its native protocol Computer to Computer Link (CTCL). Recognizing industry needs and at the behest of global brokerages such as Citigroup, NSE commenced development of a FIX API as an alternative to the native CTCL.

Edward Mangles, Asia Pacific Regional Director of FPL, (the governing body that owns, maintains and develops the open and free FIX Protocol), commented; "As a standard developed and driven 'by the industry, for the industry', the adoption and compliant implementation of the FIX Protocol in India clearly helps lower the real costs of efficient connection into the trading venues by all market participants."

Citi Global Markets equity franchise in India is widely recognised as one of the leaders in the market, being awarded the India Best Equity House by Euromoney (2008) and IFR Asia (2005-2007) respectively. Citi was also named Best Foreign Investment Bank in India by Finance Asia and The Asset this year. Citi is a leading underwriter of Indian equities, having led key IPOs and other equity offerings during 2009 that helped raise over US$5 billion bn for Indian issuers.

Citi, the leading global financial services company, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 140 countries. Through Citicorp and Citi Holdings, Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management. Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com or www.citi.com.



CONTACT DETAILS
James Griffiths, Citi Corporate Affairs, Citi, +852 2868 7668, james.a.griffiths@citi.com
Debasis Ghosh, India Corporate Affairs, Citi, +91 (22) 4001 5009, debasis.ghosh@citi.com

KEYWORDS
CONSUMER, MARKETING, BANKING, BUSINESS SERVICES, Financial Analyst, IT, STOCK EXCHANGES, TECHNOLOGY

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