Privately-held Ubitrade reported turnover of EUR17m in 2003, and expects a slight increase of growth for 2004. The firm employs 140 staff in Paris, London, Frankfurt, Chicago and Sydney and has a development centre in Tunisia.

GL Trade says it will combine Ubitrade's clearing and settlement product Ubix with its own GL Win front-end software and middle office application GL Clearvision to provide clients with an integrated front-to-back office system for derivatives trading, which will also be available as a hosted service.

Ubitrade also provides Tradix, a trading and order management system (OMS) for OTC products. GL Trade says the Tradix product will enable it to integrate OTC instruments within its own OMS for equities and derivatives.

Ubitrade is also a distributor, in some European countries, of the Fermat range of statutory risk management tools for banks. Its consolidation within the GL Trade group is expected to result in an extension of the geographic reach of the partnership.

Commenting on the acquisition, Yassine Brahim, CEO of Ubitrade, says: "GL Trade's global reach combined with their worldwide sales network will be very beneficial to us."

The acquisition is the latest in a spending spree by Paris-based GL Trade which has bought a number of business in both the US and Europe in a bid to reinforce its position as a global supplier to the wholesale financial markets.

GL Trade recently acquired Davidge Data Systems, a US equities and options order routing specialist, from S1 Corporation; and Iris Group, a Dutch provider of screen-based trading and decision support software.

Last year the vendor bought Misys Securities Trading Systems' businesses in the UK, Japan and Hong Kong.