SecFinex has gone live with its new online auction system, which allows securities lenders to sell individual lines of stock over the Internet. Three auctions have so far been completed.
Securities lenders can use the system to create auctions at any time, defining various parameters such as size of auction, reserve level, and collateral, as well as determining which firms can bid at the auction. Bidders can bid as many times as they wish. All bids are firm and the highest bid wins the auction.
Sarah Nicholson, head of securities lending & repo at Morley Fund Managers, says: "We have run two auctions on the new SecFinex auction system and have been very impressed with the functionality. It has resulted in better transparency and thus we have achieved higher lending rates than in the bilateral market."
The UK online securities marketplace has also signed up seven new firms, bringing the total number of companies active on the system to twenty-four. The new firms include ING Bank, Macquarie Bank Limited and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney.
Jan Bart de Boer, senior manager of securities lending at ING Bank Amsterdam, says joining SecFinex will streamline the bank's lending process and bring ING one step closer to staight-through processing.