Today Nasdaq, Inc. revealed a new agreement with Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) to upgrade the technological infrastructure of Hong Kong's main derivatives market, including trading, clearing and real-time risk management technologies. The agreement also extends the existing relationship for an additional five years. HKEX and Nasdaq have been technology partners since 1994. 

Under the agreement with HKEX, Nasdaq will deliver a new multi-asset trading technology engine (Nasdaq Multi Matching Engine), a state-of-the-art multi-asset derivatives clearing engine and a real-time risk management solution (Nasdaq Clearing Engine and Nasdaq Real-Time Risk), which will increase performance, speed, flexibility and resiliency of trading and clearing. Further, the new platform will address the sophisticated risk management and stress testing needs of today's CCPs and exchanges to manage risk of financial derivatives such as equity, FX, commodities and fixed income asset classes, all under the new Nasdaq Financial Framework architecture. The upgrade is expected to be completed in the second half of 2018. 

"We have been able to provide superior capability and very reliable market infrastructure, high priorities at HKEX, with the Nasdaq technology we use in our derivatives market," said Richard Leung, HKEX's Co-Head of IT.  "We look forward to completing our upgrade smoothly and receiving continued high quality technical support from Nasdaq." 

"Nasdaq is proud of the technology partnership that has existed between our respective organizations for nearly 25 years," said Lars Ottersgård, Executive Vice President and Head of Market Technology, Nasdaq. "HKEX is one of the global capital markets' true innovators who are committed to the continuous introduction of new technologies to bolster and strengthen the product and services offerings for their clients and partners, along with a rigorous focus on shaping the future of our industry. We are thrilled to support HKEX on this journey and further our relationship in the years to come." 

The architecture that HKEX's derivatives market will run on, the Nasdaq Financial Framework, is designed to ensure openness, flexibility and the capability of supporting HKEX's requirements. The solution comprises of a number of seamlessly integrated Business Applications across the trade lifecycle that leverage a single, operational hub. For post-trade operations, the Nasdaq Clearing business application is fully integrated with the Nasdaq Matching Engine, which will allow HKEX to benefit from a more harmonised approach. Additionally, the Nasdaq Financial Framework is built to accommodate continuous change, which allows seamless integration with other third-party trading and post-trade systems, thus supporting a reduction of the total cost of ownership (TCO). 

Nasdaq's exchange technology, including trading, clearing, CSD and market surveillance systems, is in operation in over 100 marketplaces across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean.