NSE begins trading on X-Gen platform

The Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, has announced the commencement of trading on the X-Gen platform.

A statement from the Exchange indicated that the roll out of the X-Gen which is seen as the potentially fastest trading platform is an historic milestone for the capital market community and will reinforce Nigeria’s position as a regional financial center.

It was added that “the delivery of the new age technology serves as a testimony that the NSE has succeeded in achieving one of its key goals of providing 21st century technologies to support the growth of the Nigerian Capital Market”.

The CEO of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Mr. Oscar Onyema, said that “by deploying the industry’s leading trading engine, the NSE is making it clear to the domestic and international market participants that it is dedicated to operating a high performance, low latency, robust, scalable and flexible marketplace”.
He added that, “The Nigerian Stock Exchange has always been focused on investing in technology, but with X-GEN, our trading platform is now among the most advanced in the world and that further extends our leadership position in Africa”.

Commenting on the issue, NSE’s Executive Director Market Operations and Technology, Ade Bajomo, said, “we are trading live on X-Gen and this is a result of a focused, disciplined and intensive 12-month project involving the NSE, its technical partners and the broker dealer community.

“We believe that the successful implementation of this modern, world-class trading technology suite is a significant development that will change the experience of doing business in not only the Nigerian capital market but in Africa”, he added.

It was gathered that the new trading platform is based on a number of leading technologies, including NASDAQ OMX’s XStream matching engine and the NSE’s X-GEN Market Database said to have been developed from scratch by the bourse and its technical partners.

The platform is expected to support trading of cash equities, bonds, ETFs and derivatives (from 2014), giving wider access to real time data, improved market transparency and governance.

The platform is also enabled to run the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol version 5 which have been deployed on a highly optimized low latency network (X-Net) for trading on the floor of the Exchange and remote broker-dealer offices based in Lagos and underpinned by efficient business processes.