With the announcement of the expansion of the New York Stock Exchanges Direct Plus service, which provides for greater automation of stock transactions on the venerable auction-based exchange, large financial institutions are taking over technology firms. Recently, Lava Trading was acquired by Citigroup and Sonic Financial Technologies was purchased by The Bank of New York.
The NYSE currently handles 80 percent of the trades that involve its companies, with about 10 percent of trades, or 140 million shares per day, handled electronically. The scandals that have rocked the NYSE, and the growing concern that the specialists who manage the auction-based transactions do not have the best interests of customers at heart.
Read more about the “mainstreaming” of direct execution technology on the Bank Technology News website.
