Currently Winterflood's direct market access trading service is connected to the LSE via the Fixnetix low latency and highly resilient infrastructure. Under the new contract Winterflood will receive LSE, Euronext and Xetra market data directly via Fixnetix to support its European trading desk and also to enable its direct market access service to connect to these additional exchanges.

Winterflood requires highly resilient and low latent data feeds to support its trading desks. Following a review of market data providers and vendors specialising in exchange connectivity, Winterflood selected Fixnetix as they are one of the few firms to offer both market data and exchange connectivity for trading messages utilising low latency feeds over highly resilient and high bandwidth lines.

"Our initial testing has proven that the Fixnetix system is fast and reliable, and we look forward to seeing the true level of performance capability in a live market environment. We are also pleased that Fixnetix is able to provide various data formats and their own proprietary Fixnetix format. This will facilitate easier integration and quicker time to market for our business," commented Philip Yarrow, Director of Electronic Trading at Winterflood Securities. "In times of significant market volatility, it's vital that we do not experience any latency. Our data feeds have to be reliable and fast, and we were impressed that the Fixnetix feeds to our DMA system did not suffer any degradation during the recent periods of market volatility."

"Fixnetix direct market data feeds have been designed to be fast, reliable and flexible, so we're delighted that Winterflood was able to see at first hand how, during the recent market falls of January 21st and January 22nd, low latency services are meaningless without the proven end-to-end connectivity that can ensure performance during difficult market conditions," added Hugh Hughes, Chairman and CEO at Fixnetix. "While we're proud to offer the market's fastest feeds, with round trip latencies as low as 0.4 milliseconds, we know that this performance is only significant if it's sustainable regardless of market conditions. One of the key reasons behind our ability to deliver high bandwidth connectivity, without any buffering or loss of data, is our strong relationship with major hosting partners such as Verizon Business, who make sure that Fixnetix can always deliver on its commitment to end-to-end connectivity."