Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) is betting US$380 million on a three year technology programme designed to boost the island's standing on the world's financial stage.
The bourse says its HKEx Orion programme will revolutionise its core trading platforms, covering connectivity networks, a state-of-the-art data centre and systems providing order matching, market data dissemination and market access services.
The new infrastructure and platforms will be implemented in stages over the next three years at a cost of HK$3 billion. Work on the data centre - which will support up to 1200 racks with a total power load of 8MW, making it the highest capacity service offered by any exchange in Asia-Pacific - is already underway.
Meanwhile, the hosting services, enabling participants to co-locate their systems next to HKEx's core platforms for low latency, will be launched at the end of the year. New market data services will be rolled out in 2013, with other platforms to follow.
Charles Li, chief executive, HKEx, says: "Hong Kong is part of a global and very competitive financial system, and technology drives financial markets. HKEx is investing in technology initiatives to ensure Hong Kong retains and strengthens its position as a leading financial centre. This investment will enable us to face increasing competition from other exchanges in Asia and around the world, and will be a platform to drive our future growth.
"We also aim to create an environment where brokers, technology suppliers, information vendors and network service providers can gain synergies and efficiencies by working together in an efficient ecosystem."