Dexia and AEMS team up to develop new Mifid solution

Dexia and AEMS pair up to offer a broker solution to Mifid best execution requirements.

FRANCE – Dexia Securities France (Dexia) and Atos Euronext Market Solutions (AEMS) have announced their partnership approach to develop a broker solution to the Markets in Financial Instrument Directive (Mifid) requirements.

In mid-2006 Dexia decided on a clear strategy not to become a systematic internaliser or to operate a multi-lateral trading facility alone, so it needed to find a solution that would allow it to execute client orders on multiple exchanges – taking account of the likely fragmentation of liquidity – and fulfil the best execution and reporting requirements needed by their clients.

“We used Mifid as a basis but then looked at how we could go beyond that to provide a better service for our clients,” says Sophie Langlois, deputy chief executive officer, Dexia Securities France. “We used Mifid as an opportunity to communicate with our clients to define a new service level agreement (SLA) with a transparent and quality execution policy.”

But finding the right software company that could meet all Dexia’s needs was difficult, as many firms provided only aspects of their total requirements. Dexia was looking for an integrated and global platform that would include a smart order router to provide best execution for their clients and take account of the fragmentation of liquidity, while also including an analysis and reporting tool to comply with clients information requirements.

“We chose AEMS because it already had all the pieces of software we required such as a smart router and information capture database and compliance tools; all we needed to do was liaise with the company to define the type of integrated architecture we wanted,” adds Langlois.

The Dexia-AEMS platform will be available from July this year and will comprise two main components. A smart order router that ensures clients obtain the best possible result for every trade, based on specific criteria including, price, cost and liquidity; while an analysis and reporting tool will provide web-enabled detailed and relevant reports analysing and assessing ongoing and historic trading performance. It will also include performance indicators, comparing achievements with agreed service levels.