Blackwood Securities, an agency-only direct access brokerage firm, provides its proprietary trading system and a full-service trading desk to institutional clients for the execution of single order, basket order, index arbitrage and pairs trading.
Global Crossing Financial Markets, with a customer base of over 1,200 leading financial institutions in 44 financial centers worldwide, will provide Blackwood Securities with the high-speed communications to efficiently receive and route data and orders. Blackwood uses direct connections to ECNs, exchanges and market makers to offer objective, equal access to all pools of liquidity through advanced electronic trading technologies. Blackwood's advanced order execution algorithms, combined with the speed of Global Crossing Financial Markets' high-performance global Extranet, offer the means to achieve superior trading performance.
``Global Crossing Financial Markets is proud to add Blackwood's institutional services to our global, financial Extranet,'' said Richard Farrell, managing director of global sales for Global Crossing Financial Markets. ``Blackwood's connections to increased liquidity pools through its AXcess Institutional service will provide added execution advantages for Global Crossing's on-net community of users.''
``The combination of Global Crossing's reach, speed and reliability and Blackwood's execution capabilities creates significant advantages for institutional and OTC securities traders,'' said Kirk Oberliesen, director of institutional sales and trading at Blackwood Securities. ``The added capacity of Global Crossing's on-net users will help to further Blackwood's lead in the burgeoning market for direct access trading by enabling customers to easily connect to our services via the Global Crossing Financial Extranet.''
About Blackwood Trading:
Headquartered in the heart of Wall Street, Blackwood Trading is a software development and trading management company that offers its clients the most advanced direct access trading system available anywhere in the financial community. Blackwood's AXcess technology is changing the way Wall Street trades securities by providing customers with direct, equal access to all liquidity pools and by offering unbiased electronic order routing that automates the strategies of the most successful Wall Street traders. www.blackwoodtrading.com
About Global Crossing:
Global Crossing Ltd. provides integrated telecommunications solutions over the world's most extensive global IP-based fiber-optic network, which will have more than 100,000 route miles, reaching five continents, 27 countries and more than 200 major cities by mid-2001. Global Crossing serves many of the world's largest corporations, providing a full range of managed data and voice products and services. Global Crossing operates throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Asia/Pacific region, and provides services in Asia through its subsidiary, Asia Global Crossing. Global Crossing Solutions provides integrated telecommunications solutions, including network outsourcing, to large global enterprises. Please visit www.globalcrossing.com or www.asiaglobalcrossing.com for more information.
Global Crossing Financial Markets provides a high-performance global Extranet designed for the financial community and related service providers. With users in more than 44 financial centers worldwide and more than 1,500 customer access nodes, Global Crossing Financial Markets serves over 1,200 of the world's top financial firms.
Global Crossing Financial Markets' offering includes IPC Trading Systems' patented digital Alliance MX„¢, the most widely installed voice trading system in the world. IPC's comprehensive portfolio also includes the IQMX„¢ next-generation trading system, TradeSmart CTI„¢ Solutions, infrastructure solutions, and complete customer care programs. IPC focuses exclusively on the financial trading environment, designing, manufacturing, installing, and servicing products that allow traders to communicate with each other instantly and reliably.
Statements made in this press release that state the Company's or management's intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. These risks, assumptions and uncertainties include: the ability to complete systems within currently estimated time frames and budgets; the ability to compete effectively in a rapidly evolving and price competitive marketplace; changes in the nature of telecommunications regulation in the United States and other countries; changes in business strategy; the successful integration of newly-acquired businesses; the impact of technological change; and other risks referenced from time to time in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
CONTACT GLOBAL CROSSING:
Spring, O'Brien & Co.Karen Hilyard, 212/620-7100 ext. 207KarenH@spring-obrien.com orMelissa LoVerme, 212/620-7100ext. 201MelissaL@spring-obrien.comCONTACT BLACKWOOD TRADING:Blackwood Trading, LLCKaren Genicola, 212/655-1770 ext. 237Karen@blackwoodtrading.comorSpring, O'Brien & Co.Parrish Blaszka, 973/267-8800ParrishB@spring-obrien.com