SGX invests $250 million to offer fastest access to Asia

Singapore Exchange (SGX) today announced a $250 million plan to strengthen Singapore’s position as the best market for accessing Asia.

The new initiative, dubbed Reach, will create the world’s fastest trading engine with the lowest trading latency, establish a world-class data centre for SGX and seamlessly connect trading communities in global financial hubs to Singapore. Reach will be rolled out from the first quarter of 2011.

“The resulting trading environment will be ideal for global investors, including sophisticated traders and participants new to the region. It will bring better liquidity and greater velocity to the market, enhancing SGX’s position as the Asian Gateway,” says SGX.

SGX’s new trading engine will be delivered through NASDAQ OMX’s Genium INET platform, Voltaire’s InfiniBand solution and HP’s technology. On May 7, SGX conducted a benchmark test with its partners at HP's Singapore Capacity Planning Centre and established an average order response time of 90 micro-seconds “door-to- door”.

The new SGX data centre — a state-of-the-art facility at Keppel Digihub — will house SGX’s trading, market data and clearing infrastructure and offer a wide range of co-location facilities, introducing ultra-low latency trading and market data.

The Reach initiative also includes establishing a presence at key data centres in Chicago, London, New York and Tokyo. These SGX hubs will lower cross- border connectivity costs to SGX and facilitate participation in Asia’s growing markets by a larger number of global trading firms