Options Technology, backed by Abry Partners, has announced it has agreed to acquire ACTIV Financial creating 150 new jobs and its headquarters in Belfast.
Options, a long-term provider of global capital markets services including cloud-enabled managed solutions, global trading infrastructure and telemetry analytics services, first opened a Belfast office in 2014. The company now employs close to 150 people in Belfast, most recently taking three floors at a central Belfast location in 2018. Hiring will commence immediately for the new roles.
ACTIV Financial provides real-time, delayed, historical and enriched multi-asset financial market data and offers a wide range of industry-leading solutions in a true Enterprise data platform. In addition, this acquisition further supports Options' growth strategy, allowing clients to benefit from an extensive market data footprint and global trading connectivity built on and supported by best of breed technologies, industry-leading automation and world-class cyber security and monitoring.
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Commenting on the aqqusation Danny Moore, Options' President and Chief Executive Officer said: "We believe that merging the ACTIV data feed and software capabilities on top of the Options global network and infrastructure is probably the most impactful deal in the sector in the last decade. The industry has been crying out for a true next-generation platform focused on the coming decades, near zero latency, global, on modern hardware, fully Cloud Integrated, and fully backward compatible. Merging our platforms will bring all that and more.”
Regarding plans to expand the firm’s presence in Belfast, Mr. Moore continued: "Since setting up in Belfast in 2014, we've grown the office to be our largest location globally, attracting some of the best local talent. The ACTIV acquisition will mean further growth for Options, and we are delighted to be able to leverage the highly-skilled talent pool in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland as we continue to grow our engineering and technical support capabilities."
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Steve McNeany, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder at ACTIV Financial also added: "The acquisition of ACTIV Financial by Options is an extremely exciting time in our history, and we are confident this deal will deliver a highly differentiated and competitive offering to both our current clients and the market as a whole. We believe this is the start of a new era in the market data industry providing unparalleled, fully managed market data services globally with our clients set to benefit from a wide range of strategic synergies."
This news comes as the latest in a series of strategic developments for Options, including the appointment of former Fixnetix executive Marlena Efstratopoulou to Chief Risk Officer, expansion to Canada with Toronto Office Opening, announcement of the acquisition of Fixnetix from DXC Technology, and their partnership with Packets2Disc to provide market-leading network analytics solutions.
Source: Written from press release.
