Fidessa Group plc is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

-headquartered company which provides software

Computer software

Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....

 and services such as trading systems to clients in the financial services

Financial services

Financial services refer to services provided by the finance industry. The finance industry encompasses a broad range of organizations that deal with the management of money. Among these organizations are credit unions, banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, consumer finance companies,...

 sector. The firm also provides market data

Market data

In finance, market data is quote and trade-related data associated with equity, fixed-income, financial derivatives, currency, and other investment instruments. Market data is numerical price data, reported from trading venues, such as stock exchanges...

 and related services to buy side

Buy side

Buy-side is a term used in investment banking to refer to advising institutions concerned with buying, rather than selling, assets or securities...

 and sell side

Sell side

Sell side is a term used in the financial services industry. It is a general term that indicates a firm that sells investment services to asset management firms, typically referred to as the buy side, or corporate entities...

 financial services customers.

The company is headquartered in Woking

Woking

Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, UK. It is part of the Greater London Urban Area and the London commuter belt, with frequent trains and a journey time of 24 minutes to Waterloo station....

 with offices in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, San Francisco, Belfast

Belfast

Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

, Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

, and Bahrain

Bahrain

' , officially the Kingdom of Bahrain , is a small island state near the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It is ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. The population in 2010 stood at 1,214,705, including 235,108 non-nationals. Formerly an emirate, Bahrain was declared a kingdom in 2002.Bahrain is...

. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange

London Stock Exchange

The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...

 and is a member of the FTSE 250 Index

FTSE 250 Index

The FTSE 250 Index is a capitalisation-weighted index consisting of the 101st to the 350th largest companies on the London Stock Exchange. Promotions to and demotions from the index take place quarterly in March, June, September and December...

.

History

The Company was originally founded in 1981 as Intercom Data Systems (IDS): it was later renamed royalblue Group plc, and consisted of two separate operating divisions, royalblue Financial and royalblue Technologies. royalblue Financial concentrated on the financial trading platform that has become Fidessa today, and royalblue Technologies centred around two separate products - rostrvm, a call centre technology platform, and HelpDesk for Windows. It has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 1997. In 2001 the company divested itself of the Technologies division and focused entirely on the Financial business.

With the group's core trading platform, Fidessa, being better known in the market place, the Royalblue Group plc changed its name to Fidessa Group plc following shareholder approval at the AGM held in April 2007. The change of name took effect on 1 May 2007.

In April 2007 the company also bought out the privately owned buy side

Buy side

Buy-side is a term used in investment banking to refer to advising institutions concerned with buying, rather than selling, assets or securities...

 trading provider LatentZero. This was then rebranded as Fidessa LatentZero.

In November 2008, Fidessa launched its Fidessa Fragmentation Index (FFI). This helps to show how fragmented stocks are across exchanges following the MiFID

MiFID

The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive as subsequently amended is a European Union law that provides harmonised regulation for investment services across the 30 member states of the European Economic Area...

 European landscape. Since its inception it has highlighted as one of the most interesting technical developments in the financial sector in 2008 by Finextra. The FFI project was extended in November 2009 with the launch of the award winning Fragulator. In April 2011 Fidessa launched the Tradalyzer TM that provides detailed trading analysis.

Market penetration

Around 70% of all securities

Security (finance)

A security is generally a fungible, negotiable financial instrument representing financial value. Securities are broadly categorized into:* debt securities ,* equity securities, e.g., common stocks; and,...

 transactions in London are handled by Fidessa systems.

Products

Fidessa

A sell-side suite used by 85% of the tier one global equity brokers. It provides trading, market data, order management and execution capabilities.

Fidessa LatentZero

A buy-side Order Management System

Order management system

An order management system, or OMS, is a computer software system used in a number of industries for order entry and processing.- Electronic commerce and catalogers :...

 (OMS) suite used by 8 out of 10 of the largest global asset managers. It provides trading, order management, portfolio modelling and execution capabilities.

FIX Network

In addition to a trading platform, Fidessa host a broker neutral FIX-enabled

FIX protocol

The Financial Information eXchange protocol is an electronic communications protocol initiated in 1992 for international real-time exchange of information related to the securities transactions and markets...

 execution network. This has a large number of brokers connected to it and is similar to other inhouse FIX networks, such as the LSE

London Stock Exchange

The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...

 Hub, the SunGard Transaction Network (STN) and Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters Corporation is a provider of information for the world's businesses and professionals and is created by the Thomson Corporation's purchase of Reuters Group on 17 April 2008. Thomson Reuters is headquartered at 3 Times Square, New York City, USA...

 subsidiary TradeWeb's Autex Trade Route.

HFT Platform

Because of a radical overhaul to the matching engine at the Tokyo Stock Exchange. A boom in High frequency trading in Asia has begun. Fidessa has developed an Ultra Low Latency Direct Market Access platform. (ULLDMA). Based upon the Asian focused JMIS Line handlers, Fidessa's HFT

High-frequency trading

High-frequency trading is the use of sophisticated technological tools to trade securities like stocks or options, and is typically characterized by several distinguishing features:...

platform includes Pre-trade risk checks, integration with Algo engines and other rich functionality purposely designed to help Brokers and High Frequency traders. Even though the system includes rich functionality, performance through the Gateway, like all HFT systems, is measured at the Microsecond Level.