CrossTower, a new trading platform founded by capital markets veterans on a mission to mainstream digital asset investing and trading, today announced the completion of a $6 million seed funding round led by Gerard Lopez, founder and CEO of several prominent start-up ventures and tech security companies, an early investor in Skype and one of the top technology investors in Europe.

“It’s exciting to be launching a digital-asset platform with a team that has incredible passion for the asset class and a deep understanding of the requirements needed to succeed in the digital asset industry,” said Lopez. “I look forward to taking this journey with CrossTower and helping them bring digital assets to the masses.”

CrossTower’s official May launch was well-timed with this year’s historic institutional inflows into crypto markets. The exchange currently supports highly active order books and tight spreads for crypto-to-crypto trading in the nine most widely traded currencies: Bitcoin, Ether, LiteCoin, USDC, Bitcoin Cash, XRP, Stellar, Chainlink, Basic Attention Token and ZCash. CrossTower plans to introduce additional assets and services later this year. Those interested in trading on the platform can access it here.

CrossTower Co-founder and CEO, Kapil Rathi, has spent his career building and running trading venues from the ground up while in senior leadership roles at the Cboe (Chicago Board Options Exchange), Bats Global Markets (acquired by Cboe), ISE (International Securities Exchange) and NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). Prior to CrossTower, Rathi was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at exchange software provider, AlphaPoint.

“We have seen great initial success since our launch in May and look forward to continued growth as we mainstream the digital asset investing and trading process,” said Rathi. “This is a critical time for the crypto industry, and this funding will accelerate our ability to serve this exciting and emerging market segment.”

With deep expertise in the regulatory landscape related to decentralized finance, CrossTower Co-founder and President, Kristin Boggiano, has built innovative products in the capital markets industry for over 20 years. She was instrumental in the development of numerous derivatives and other structured products at Merrill Lynch and Schulte Roth, was a Managing Director on the quant desk at Guggenheim, and worked with Rathi as Chief Legal Officer (CLO) at AlphaPoint.

“We are fortunate for Gerard’s commitment to help us grow and innovate within the digital asset industry,” said Boggiano.  

CrossTower brings five distinct qualities to the digital asset markets:

1. An Institutional Experience - senior team members have spent their careers building and running traditional trading platforms and thus institutions will find their experience with CrossTower to be very familiar;
2. Overall Low Cost of Trading – a competitive and innovative pricing model along with technology to help customers achieve best execution by minimizing implicit and opportunity costs;
3. Liquidity Out of the Gate - partnerships with leading market makers and high-throughput APIs to connect to other institutional and retail trading platforms;
4. Regulatory Safeguards - rigorous security and regulatory safeguards, including KYC/AML screening, and oversight by a globally recognized third-party auditor; and
5. Robust Technology- low latency matching engine supports a wide range of innovative order types and co-location services help users achieve lightning-fast trading speed.

CrossTower Investor, Gerard Lopez, is Chairman & CEO of Nekton Global, former Chairman of Genii Capital, Founding Partner of Mangrove Capital and former Board Member of WIX and Skype. No further details of CrossTower’s seed funding round were disclosed.

CaixaBank, Spain’s leading retail bank, has appointed Gabriela Martínez de Aragón as UK Country Manager. A seasoned finance professional, she brings with her extensive international banking experience as well as solid expertise in project and structured finance. 

Martínez de Aragón holds a Master’s degree in engineering by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and a degree in international business management. Her career includes experience in financial consulting, infrastructure development and corporate and investment banking. Prior to joining CaixaBank, she spent 13 years at BBVA in Singapore, where she was head of the bank’s operations in the Asian financial hub.

CaixaBank UK is headquartered at St. Mary Axe, in the City of London, and comprises a team of 16 professionals, providing banking services to large local corporates and multinational companies (from Spain and elsewhere) active in the British market.

CaixaBank has had a presence in the United Kingdom since 2003 when it first opened a representative office. In 2016, the entity was granted a banking licence and has since acted as a branch, providing a wide range of wholesale financial products including short- and long- term corporate financing, deposit taking, and trade finance, among others.

The virtual showroom is a new way of showing and selling products and services to buyers and businesses, and while it comes from the world of B2C fashion, it’s promising to revolutionise B2B too. This is according to digital eCommerce solutions specialist, Kooomo, which has employed this modern technology to overcome the limitations of Coronavirus - which continues to impose itself on retail sales both on and offline.

Recent sector research illustrates how a coordinated image between B2C, B2B, and in-store experience improves the sales performance of a brand. "When we talk about the virtual showroom, we don't mean the virtual copy of physical stores, but a technological interface that is now necessary for those who want to enhance the sales capacity of their buyer network," says Ciaran Bollard, CEO at Kooomo. " The virtual showrooms improve the "traditional B2B sales experience thanks to the tools provided by digital transformation.

“The Kooomo platform runs on the very latest in eCommerce technology, which makes it possible to develop virtual showrooms which can be integrated into our customers’ websites - we already integrate with numerous technological partners who cater to the need of our customers," says Bollard. "When creating the virtual showroom, we can install features that allow you to manage multiple sales paths at the same time by following the specific needs of each one thanks to customer clustering processes.”

It also supports assistance, by phone, virtual or by chatbot during the entire purchase process and can create marketing actions aimed at a specific target or a specific country.

Bollard adds, “one of the characteristics most sought after by SMEs that need to improve their performance is a simplification, especially from the point of view of technological management. For example, thanks to a single back-end, Kooomo allows brands and companies to manage up to three front-ends simultaneously: that of B2B, B2C and virtual showrooms.

"The buyer and the customer can connect to the virtual showroom via video call and thus view the collection, utilising the assisted sale and completing the order. High definition, 3D images, augmented reality, and virtual reality environments are all now accessible thanks to specific technological partners. Each product page is optimised to ensure a unique and customised experience for each customer," says Bollard. The platform can support open price lists and can apply different discounts for user groups and product groups, even multiple for B2B, to facilitate restocking and replacement of the goods.

"The challenge today for those who work in the field of eCommerce is to manage B2B with the same care as B2C, ensuring the same attention to usability for both companies and buyers," concludes Bollard.

OpenDoor Securities LLC (“OpenDoor”) has launched the first ‘all-to-all’ marketplace for on-the-run (“OTR”) U.S. Treasuries. The anonymous order book will be the first U.S. Treasury venue to offer non-discriminatory pricing in benchmarks regardless of an account’s designation. The roll-out is in direct response to voiced concerns regarding the negative impact of information arbitrage as well as the dearth of liquidity experienced during times of stress on traditional trading venues.

Concerns about information leakage have been underscored by the recent crisis. The ability for institutional investors to source and trade large blocks of OTRs directly and anonymously on the OpenDoor platform will not only improve execution quality but will also provide an additional mechanism for market participants to clear risk without market impact.  

OpenDoor is experiencing an uptick in volume in its less liquid off-the-run (“OFTR”) issues and anticipates the same in OTRs. Combined order volume on the platform in May and June doubled the volume from January and February. More importantly, OpenDoor’s buy-side to buy-side match rate has increased to a record 70% since the launch of its new protocols and continuous order book on January 6th of this year.

“We found out in March that the largest debt market in the world does not function well when it is growing and the ability to intermediate its risk is not," said Susan Estes, CEO, President, and Co-founder of OpenDoor. “OpenDoor is a private sector solution to a public sector problem. Innovation does not come without disruption and we believe that the expanded OpenDoor platform is a necessary step forward in tackling the structural issues that plague the U.S. Treasury market.” 

OpenDoor’s matching engine sits on the cloud eliminating any datacenter colocation advantages or disadvantages for speed of execution. All participants adhere to the same set of rules including a minimum size requirement of $10 million. These elements combine to create an incentive structure where institutions can find one another without fear of being disadvantaged, all while protecting their information content.

With over 70 buy-side firms and numerous dealers trading on the platform, OpenDoor’s expanded offering caters to a variety of trading styles and allows a more diversified user group to connect with new counterparties.

TrackInsight (www.trackinsight.com), the leading global independent ETF analytics platform, has named Nasdaq its exclusive distributor for North America.

TrackInsight operates a unique global platform dedicated to ETF search, analysis and selection aimed at professional investors. With over 100,000 unique users and 2,500 qualified professional investors using the platform for their day-to-day ETF screening, TrackInsight is recognized as the leading source of independent and reliable information on over 6,000 Exchange Traded Funds listed globally.

In order to accelerate its presence in North America, TrackInsight has joined with Nasdaq to distribute its services to financial institutions and promote the usage of the platform amongst its network of investment professionals.

The offerings now available in North America include “TrackInsight Global View,” a unique data service designed to provide professional investors with verified ETF reference data as well as advanced metrics on investment-related considerations such as ESG transparency, style exposure, liquidity, performance, risk and replication accuracy analysis. Global View is also known as the most accurate and comprehensive source of daily global ETF inflows and used by various firms such as hedge funds, portfolio managers, research institutions and fund promoters.

Jean-René Giraud, founding C.E.O. of TrackInsight stresses that “this initiative represents a major milestone in the development of our firm, it brings a very innovative service to the buy and sell sides of the ETF ecosystem. We are delighted Nasdaq is distributing our solutions and we will be working closely with Nasdaq teams to maintain the highest possible level of innovation for the services we offer.”

Oliver Albers, SVP and Head of Data for Nasdaq’s Global Information Services adds that, “TrackInsight and Nasdaq are each dedicated to making markets more accessible through transparent and cost-effective data. Nasdaq’s work to accelerate TrackInsight’s presence in the Americas brings a refreshing, innovative and reliable service to the very fast growing ETF industry that has been so central to helping investors access markets. This collaboration is a solid win for the investing public.”

TrackInsight Global View will be made available to Nasdaq customers through Nasdaq’s Quandl platform, which provides a robust source of core and alternative data and also offers Nasdaq Cloud Data Service via its storefront.

Equiniti, the international technology-led services and payments specialist, is delighted to announce that it is becoming EQ.

EQ provides accessible digital services for regulated markets. It specialises in equity and investment products, pensions, payments and regtech, and performs administration and payment services for c.70 of the FTSE 100.

The new label, EQ, aligns the company’s branding with its three core divisions: EQ Paymaster, EQ Boardroom, and EQ Digital; alongside the US division, EQ U.S.

EQ seamlessly serves the needs of over 3,000 companies and, through those companies, more than 30 million shareholders, investors and pensioners across the world. The rebrand is one of numerous initiatives underway to connect EQ more closely with the 30m customers it serves. These also include the launch of a far-reaching vulnerable customer programme and a supplier code of conduct to drive sustainability through EQ’s supply chain.

“The change to EQ is strongly symbolic: as we enter a new decade, and a new era for Equiniti, we’ve been considering what this means for us,” commented Guy Wakeley, Group Chief Executive of EQ. “It means a stronger purpose; a more collaborative, sustainable business; it means investing to protect vulnerable customers.

“Our new brand represents the simplicity of our operations, the quality of our service, and our everincreasing digitisation. We continually strive to care for every customer and to simplify each and every transaction. EQ embodies our motivation to achieve this.”

The company’s legal name will remain Equiniti Group plc

TrustQuay, the leading technology provider to the corporate services, trust and fund administration markets, has today announced the signing of an agreement with LGL Group to migrate its business onto the TrustQuay NavOne system. LGL Group is an independent provider of corporate administration, financial reporting, funds and family office solutions. Headquartered in Jersey, LGL has offices in Luxembourg and London.

Following a competitive selection process, the new agreement will see LGL centralise all its business onto NavOne, to provide a single, fully integrated global technology solution across Jersey, London and Luxembourg for their fiduciary and funds clients. Furthermore, LGL will benefit from NavOne’s roadmap, supporting the company growth particularly as the industry digitalisation gains momentum.

Zena Couppey, Group Chief Commercial Officer at LGL Group, comments: “During the selection process, we were impressed by the experience and future plans of the TrustQuay team and the ability of NavOne to bring together our funds with the rest of our fiduciary business onto a single centralised system across our multi-jurisdictional platform.”

Keith Hale, Executive Chairman of TrustQuay, comments: “We are delighted to sign our first agreement under the TrustQuay brand by partnering with LGL Group and supporting them to achieve their growth ambitions. Our product roadmap is based on keeping pace with the evolving needs of clients like LGL, by meeting their regulatory, jurisdictional and digitalisation demands. We look forward to collaborating closely with LGL on our shared vision for the industry.”