ICAP acquires Israeli post-trade software firm Traiana

The world's largest stock broker firm ICAP has inked a deal to acquire Israeli software company Traiana for $247 million (121 million) in one of the biggest deals in the Israeli IT market in 2007.

The UK-based inter-dealer broker will add Traiana's post-trade processing automation software to its post-trade services to grow it market share of this market and capitalise on the increase in trading volumes in line with the expansion of electronic and voice broking trading in recent years.

Traiana provides global banks, broker and dealers, buy-side firms and e-trading platforms with software to automate post-trade processing of financial transactions.

Its Harmony network is widely used as a neutral trading platform in foreign currency markets, as well as 50 of the world's biggest banks, to process tens of thousands of transactions worth hundreds of billions of dollars each day. And its business model is driven by the growth in the number of trades, as each trade triggers multiple post-trade events where Traiana charges for each event.

Established in 2000, it has 110 employees based in Tel Aviv and its main investors are Gemini, Evergreen, Sequoia Capital, Pitango and Venture Capital and its gross income is expected to reach $15 million (7.4 million).

ICAP is traded at a value of some $7 billion in the London stock exchange and has a circulation of $1.5 trillion daily.

Michael Spencer, ICAP group chief executive said: "Traiana has shown very significant growth and we now expect this growth to accelerate further, driven by a large increase in the number and size of both momentum and macro players and algorithmic trading in the OTC [over-the-counter stock] markets, especially foreign exchange."

Gil Mandelzis, Traiana's chief executive added: "Traiana and ICAP share a vision of providing comprehensive exchange-like post-trade services to the OTC markets. By becoming part of ICAP, Traiana will be better able to serve our existing clients and platform partners and more rapidly expand the range of post-trade services we provide."

A 25-year veteran enterprise technology expert, Miya Knights applies her deep understanding of technology gained through her journalism career to both her role as a consultant and as director at Retail Technology Magazine, which she helped shape over the past 17 years. Miya was educated at Oxford University, earning a master’s degree in English.

Her role as a journalist has seen her write for many of the leading technology publishers in the UK such as ITPro, TechWeekEurope, CIO UK, Computer Weekly, and also a number of national newspapers including The Times, Independent, and Financial Times.