Israeli Correlix increases market share on order win from NYSE Euronext
By Gwen Ackerman
January 10, 2011
Correlix Ltd., the Israeli startup whose software monitors the speed of transactions on financial exchanges, said its technology was chosen by NYSE Euronext, giving it a majority market share.
“Today Correlix is being used to monitor about 60 percent of all U.S. equity daily trading volume,” Shawn Melamed, Correlix founder, president and chief technology officer, said in a phone interview from New York.
NYSE Euronext will start implementing the Correlix software later this year, the two companies said in a press release.
Correlix clients include Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., CBOE Holdings Inc. and Direct Edge Holdings LLC, all added last year. In the coming year, it plans to expand in Europe and Asia and extend offerings to monitor trading of futures, foreign currency exchanges and fixed income, Melamed said.
Financial firms spent about $15 billion on data centers in 2009, with most of the expenditure driven by a need to reduce delays, Tabb Group, a Massachusetts-based markets research company, said in June. Correlix software helps exchanges quickly fix problems in transaction speed and provides information to let brokers decide how to trade for maximum benefit.
Melamed, who declined to give any financial figures for the company or its deals, said sales were boosted by regulations put in place by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission such as a prohibition of unfiltered market access. As a result, all traders must work through an authorized broker, he said.
This made it vital to understand “how fast your broker is before you get to the market,” Melamed said.
Correlix, which also has offices in London and Herzliya, Israel, is backed by Sequoia Capital Partners, Genesis Partners, Blumberg Capital and others. Corvil Ltd., one of its main competitors, started a website in June with NYSE Technologies to provide key trading performance statistics.