Virtu Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIRT) today announced a strategic engagement with IPO investment network ClearingBid, Inc.
Under the terms of the agreement, ClearingBid’s proprietary IPO network will leverage Virtu ITG Net’s scalable connectivity platform. All brokers and financial institutions that rely on Virtu’s connectivity to complete millions of trades daily will now be able to submit orders for IPO shares using the same order entry systems as secondary market limit orders.
Virtu’s intelligent, integrated network, ITG Net, enables customers to go far beyond the basics of connectivity. In addition to providing reliable, 24/6 managed access to trades with more than 700 brokers and market centers worldwide, ITG Net provides invaluable tools and transparency to improve clients’ trading process before, during and after the trade.
Steve Cavoli, EVP and Head of Global Execution Services at Virtu, commented:
“The combination of Virtu’s massive FIX network and trading infrastructure with ClearingBid’s new IPO offering will expand access to the primary market to all investors and their brokers, expanding access to one of the most important segments of our capital markets ».
“Virtu is one of the industry’s largest trade providers with leading processing and fulfillment capabilities,” noted Matt Venturi, CEO and Founder of ClearingBid. “By providing investors with seamless order entry and accessibility, and having Virtu ITG Net serve as our preferred network service provider, ClearingBid moves one step closer to our mission to improve an often inefficient and opaque IPO process. Our partnership with Virtu further supports ClearingBid’s ability to leverage today’s securities industry infrastructure and order entry protocols to meet the growing demand for access to IPO investments. The shared vision to create a new IPO investment standard while promoting further transparency of the industry will help expand investment opportunities for both retail and institutional investors.”
The combined capabilities of Virtu’s global FIX connectivity solutions and ClearingBid’s IPO network aim to make primary share investing open to all brokers in the network and especially to their end investors. ClearingBid’s price discovery platform, which enables issuing companies to optimize their IPO price while achieving the broadest possible investor participation, will be further enhanced by Virtu ITG Net’s connectivity to hundreds of broker-dealers that can now be seamlessly integrated into the primary solution of ClearingBid.