This Week: Fidelity Digital Asset, State Street, HSBC, Instinet, INTL FCStone, Quantopian

Fidelity Establishes European Digital Asset Business

Fidelity has announced that it is establishing a new European entity for investing in digital assets.

The firm will provide custody and trade execution services for digital assets to investors such as hedge funds, family offices, and market intermediaries. Fidelity will also provide client services to support clients navigate the digital asset space.

State Street and Gemini Launch Digital Asset Pilot

State Street and Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange and custodian, has announced the launch of a digital asset pilot.

The pilot performs reporting scenarios on a user’s holdings within Gemini’s custody. It will initially report on holdings for two selected cryptocurrencies but can then be adapted to report on holdings for other digital assets such as security tokens. Clients will be able to consolidate their reporting of digital assets serviced by Gemini with their traditional assets serviced by State Street.

HSBC Joins OpenFins Series C Financing Round

HSBC is now added to the list of firms that have joined OpenFin’s Series C Financing, bringing the total amount raised for this round to $22 million, with total funding to date reaching $45million.

Among the names are JP Morgan, Barclays, Bain Capital Venture, CME Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, NYCA Partners, Pivot Investment Partners, and Wells Fargo. OpenFin will use the funding round to expand its product offerings into the Asian markets and to fund new product initiatives.

Instinet Launches BlockCross in Europe

Instinet, a provider of agency-model brokerage services has announced the European launch of BlockCross, a workflow solution for managing block trading for securities.

The platform will enable traders to route a variety of conditional, block size order to Instinet’s European multilateral trading facility, BlockMatch. The rollout follows on from Instinet’s acquisition of BlockCross for US stock trading and now enables clients to trade both EU and US securities.

INTL FCStone Make Bid to Acquire Tellimer Group Broker Business

INTL FCStone announced it has made an offer to purchase the Tellimer Group’s brokerage business.

The transaction will include the takeover of Exotix Partners, Tellimer Capital (Nigeria) and the brokering business of Tellimer Markets. As part of the deal INTL FCStone’s clients will have access to Tellimer’s research services to complement its securities offering globally. The closing bid is still subject to limited conditions and regulatory approval.

Quantopian Selects Tora for OEMS

Quantopian, a Boston-based financial technology has selected Tora for its order and execution management system (OEMS).

The platform looks to improve Quatopian’s workflow, enable interoperability between other systems and provides customized functionality. The system is multi-asset, multi-region, compliant with MIFID II, provides detailed reports and has a broker-neutral pairs application.