Fimat's UK branch first to adopt Belzberg-CBOE system

Broker Fimat’s UK trading arm is the first European customer for the Hybrid Trading System (HyTS), a joint offering from Belzberg Technologies and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), reports Risk's sister publication Trading Technology Week .

Two traders at Fimat’s London options desk have been using HyTS to trade on all five U.S options exchanges for about a month, said Simon Mead, head of European equity products, Fimat.

Fimat uses HyTS to send orders to the CBOE, International Securities Exchange, Pacific Exchange, American and Philadelphia stock exchanges.

“We think it’s inevitable that U.S markets will evolve away from the [open-outcry] floor,” said Mead.

Paris-based Fimat has 110 brokers in London and 600 overall, but only a select few would have an interest solely in trading US equity options, said Mead. Fimat is mainly in the futures market but has sought to expand into options and equities, a spokesperson added.

The HyTS system is hosted on an application service provider model, with users connecting via the Internet and through third-party extranet services such as Radianz and TNS, said Jet Williams, Toronto-based Belzberg’s senior sales representative for the UK.