TORA Compass Continues to Provide the Leading Trading Platform Focused on Asia

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Tora (www.toratrading.com), the leading trading platform and liquidity provider for Asia, announced today that 2008 was a record year, having generated significant growth in trading volume, market share and new trading capabilities in TORA Compass. These results reflect Tora’s dedication to providing clients with superior trading support, service and expertise across Asia.

Tora’s product portfolio includes the TORA Compass trading platform, which is the leading trading solution for Asia; TORA Equity Trading, an agency trading desk available for clients who would like to avoid the logistical, regulatory and financial hurdles necessary to establish internal trading operations; and TORA Clearpool, that offers transparent off-exchange liquidity for Asia. Tora products have all been internally developed to be fully-integrated and provide clients with comprehensive trading solutions.

2008 highlights include:

• Achieved double digit trading volume growth in 2008 with over a 50% increase;
• Grew market share to represent approximately 4% of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, over 1% of the Singapore Stock Exchange and 1% of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange;
• Awarded “Best Asian Vendor of the Year” by TradeTech Asia;
• Launched TORA Clearpool, Asia’s first published market for over-the-counter (OTC) liquidity;
• Expanded our global footprint by opening new sales and support offices in Singapore and New York office to better serve our clients;
• Expanded global coverage for TORA Compass by adding 22 global and regional brokers, 17 new exchanges in 10 different countries, over 400 FIX connections in Asia as well as the U.S., Europe and Latin America, and significantly expanded our liquidity venues and algorithmic trading capabilities; and
• Continued to add Asia-focused features that make TORA Compass the leading trading platform in the market.

"In the current market environment, traders require technology more than ever to help them navigate the current market conditions," said Robert Dykes, CEO of Tora. "Clients are demanding a technology partner – one that provides extensive Asia expertise, local support and broad access to improve the trading experience in a material way. We will continue to invest in R&D to continually improve our existing products and add new products to address the issues traders face each day in the market.”

Tora’s COO, Ian Lombard, added, “In 2008 we saw a trend where our clients were consolidating their trading technology platforms. This was in an effort to gain efficiencies, but more importantly, to generate alpha by accessing a broader array of liquidity choices, expanding electronic trading capabilities and reducing overall transaction costs. TORA Compass is designed to simplify trading in order to improve execution and lower administrative costs.”

About Tora

Tora is the recognized leader in electronic trading systems and access to liquidity focused on Asia. The TORA Compass trading platform is the most comprehensive multi-broker, multi-product trading platform with electronic access to more than 75 global and regional brokers, 24 markets in 14 countries and over 10 off-exchange liquidity venues as well as over 150 algorithmic trading strategies. TORA Compass offers a full suite of trade execution capabilities to trade equities, stock futures and options, index futures and options, warrants, convertible bonds, swaps and other synthetics, all on one platform. Over 25% of all electronic trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is processed each month through TORA Compass. TORA Compass utilizes state-of-the-art infrastructure to provide low latency, 99.99% up time and high reliability across multiple markets. Tora Compass also includes extensive OMS functionality, including separable parent/child orders, real-time intraday P&L, staging capabilities and post-trade analytics. Tora’s independent algorithms and off-exchange liquidity products are used by buy-side firms to implement complex trading strategies, achieving fast execution and best price. TORA Compass is provided in an application service provider (ASP) model, and requires no IT infrastructure or staff at the client site. The platform integrates with a full complement of third-party and proprietary order management, portfolio management, risk, accounting and other back-office and compliance systems. Tora has over 100 employees dedicated to Asia, and maintains sales and support offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York and San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.toratrading.com.

Tora Trading Services, TORA Compass, TORA Equity Trading, TORA Clearpool and the Tora logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Tora Trading Services in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Copyright © 2009. TORA Trading Services. All rights reserved.

Contacts

Tora Trading Services
Maryam Aflak, +1-415-546-2266
maflak@toratrading.com