Calyon deploys global electronic interest rate derivatives platform

The new system, based on technology vendor SmartTrade's liquidity management system, was built to automate order and trade flows.

"Orders were previously handled more or less manually, not through a central, internal market-place aggregating quotes from various trading and sales groups and liquidity sources," said Harry Gozlan, chief executive at SmartTrade in Aix-en-Provence.

The new system enables the French bank to automate order and trade flows between traders, sales and electronic communications networks to provide profiled quotes to clients on over-the-counter IRDs. This is achieved by using algorithms to manage flows as well as pricing.

Benjamin Mellul, global co-head of IRD trading at Calyon in Paris, said automating the liquidity management on IRDs, which trade at extremely high speeds, is a highly complex and necessary change to optimise the way transactions are carried out. He said: "We have targeted two goals, externally to improve the high levels of service we are providing our clients, and internally to improve the way we identify the sources of our revenues."

Gozlan added that FX, like other asset classes, can be brought into the SmartTrade platform to service clients on a cross-asset basis, using the same internal trading paradigms.