LMAX CEO David Mercer: “We need to be in New York in the next 12 to 18 months.”
UK-based institutional FX broker LMAX, which dubs itself a ‘multi-lateral trading facility for foreign exchange’, in indicating its intention to open a US operation by the end of 2014.
In a posting on its website, LMAX CEO David Mercer made some comments including:
“All the major players have matching engines in London and New York”
“We need to be in New York at some stage in the next 12 to 18 months”
“We chose the LD4 data center [Equinix’s data center in Slough, UK] because of its cross connection to NY4 [the Equinix data center in Secaucus, NJ]”
The new LMAX location would follow the launch earlier this year of the MTF’s second venue, LMAX Interbank, which targets bank-only trade matching.
We are now more than six months removed from the LMAX management buyout, in which LMAX CEO David Mercer and his team, backed by ex-Betfair Chairman Ed Wray, bought control of LMAX from UK peer-to-peer betting giant Betfair. After several tens of millions of dollars were poured into LMAX by Betfair and by Goldman Sachs, the management buyout was done at a company value of just £3.6 million for LMAX (about $5 million).
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