BIDS Trading says 2008 will be all about the buyside. The electronic crossing venture created for block trading will concentrate its efforts this year on securing more connections to third-party order and execution management system providers.
That way, it can better land buyside clients, said BIDS chief executive Tim Mahoney. Establishing sellside connections has been easier, Mahoney added, because brokers generally control the technology themselves. Not so for the buyside.
“You can’t go out and sell your product to a buyside account until that buyside account can actually use your system,” he said.
BIDS, which went live in April, is connected to 15 brokers and averaged more than 17.5 million shares a day [double counted] last quarter, Mahoney said. BIDS is in the “final phases” of landing contracts with several OMS and EMS vendors, he said.
BIDS secured connections in January with two Citi products: Lava ColorPalette, a sellside OMS; and OpenPort, a buyside EMS.
