The battle of the African trading systems hots up as South Africa’s Securities and Trading Technology company (www.tsti.co.za) also promotes its systems at the African Stock Exchanges Association gathering in Zambia (10-12 November).
STT has been operating since 1985, when it started writing systems for trading gilts and it provides many systems to Africa’s leading exchange, South Africa’s JSE Ltd. (www.jse.co.za) since its first systems were installed in 1994.
The company says its applications in use include:
• MITS – Multi-instrument trading system (called “Nutron” by the JSE).
• MICS – Multi-instrument clearing system (“Nuclears”).
• Fortress – a custodial management system.
• GCMS – global clearing and management system, used by all clearing members in South Africa, except 1 bank.
• CBMS – Central bank management system used by the South African Reserve Bank uses this system.
• MMIS –money market internet system, used by SARB for their tenders including for treasury bill tenders.
STT Managing Director Michelle Janke told African Capital Markets News: “On the JSE they trade equity derivatives, commodity derivatives, currency derivatives and fixed income – all run from our trading system called Nutron. We also provide the JSE with surveillance systems, clearing and settlement systems to enable a full solution, including the ATS (automated trading system).”According to STT, the JSE’s former fixed-income market, called YieldX, went live on STT trading platform in 2005 and the more recently acquired BESA (Bnod Exchange of South Africa) portion will be going live on STT system in March 2011.”
Ms Janke says: “The Fortress custodial management system is already used in the Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe markets. We are in discussion with 4 other African countries to roll out our Exchange solution, with further details possible early next year.”
“Practical creativity is not just limited to product development. Innovation extends to processes and operations as part of a search for cheaper, simpler and more flexible business models. As STT was born in Africa and still resides in Africa we have had to design solutions which take into account a poor infrastructure, thus enabling these markets to perform all functions of any market for a reasonable cost.”