The product offering

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Client Connectivity: the perfect complement to our Trading solutions

The second pillar of our historical Front Office business, the Client Connectivity Business Line, covers all the connectivity tools supplied to our clients. It provides overall management of the GL NET network, our order routing and market data network, manages the development of ASP market connectivity solutions and distributes our offer tailored for the needs of the Buy Side community (fund managers, investment banks).

Record volumes on GL NET

The GL NET community includes more than 650 of the largest international financial institutions and provides access to over 130 equity, derivative, commodity, fixed income and forex markets.

The GL NET network links the main (Sell Side) members of the financial community with the growing number of Buy Side users. It is accessible from GL TRADE workstations, but also from FIX applications or third-party software. It provides its members with optimum levels of security, reliability and availability for the transmission of orders. Its large bandwidth ensures average transmission times of 0.25 seconds around the globe with no loss or deterioration.

In 2006, the GL NET network carried record trading volumes, with more than 80,000 orders executed every day. The network opened access to several new pools of liquidity during 2006, most notably Hotspot FXi forex market, the Warsaw, Prague and Istanbul equity markets, the Jade and Nybot (commodities) derivatives markets and the Safex futures and options exchange in South Africa.

In terms of market data, GL TRADE supplies essential financial information directly to users’ screens. It offers, in real time, data from specialist information providers (AFP, AFX, Dow Jones, S&P MarketScope, Trading Central, etc.) and from connected markets: real-time pricing, order books and market depth. In particular it includes all US data flows (NASDAQ, NYSE, INET, Supermontage, Archipelago). GL TRADE is also one of the few suppliers to provide full market depth information for US data, with its rivals generally limiting their offer to the best limit by counterparty.

During the year we also introduced the GL NET 24 project, with a view to simplifying and speeding up GL NET connections. This allows full automation of the client-broker authorisation cycle.

Over a hundred clients connected to the ASP service

In 2006, we finalised a European ASP electronic trading platform enabling rapid and inexpensive deployment of trading solutions for many capital market clients. GL TRADE offers brokers a cost-effective solution for trading directly on exchanges via the internet, a VPN or over GL NET. We are responsible for hosting and maintenance of all financial data collection and trading software and equipment, and now offer ASP access to more than 30 exchanges, following the notable launches in 2006 of connections to exchanges in Scandinavia, Ireland, Spain and Austria. Over one hundred clients have already licenced this solution, and we expect to see a strengthening of the ASP offering in 2007.

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