Clients of both firms are now able to route European equities orders to BNP Paribas for execution through Townsend's RealTick execution management system (EMS).

"As electronic trading continues to grow globally, our clients want high performance trading solutions that can be customized to meet their ever increasing sophisticated needs across the global equity markets," comments Matthew Carr, BNP Paribas Managing Director, Head of Institutional Equities. "The addition of Townsend's RealTick EMS to our expansive Direct Market Access deployment provides the full-featured functionality and scalability that our clients expect and demand from BNP Paribas," he adds.

"BNP Paribas is a major global financial services institution with a presence in more than 85 countries, so we are pleased to add them to our global multi-broker network," states Rustam Lam, Executive Director for Townsend Analytics. "The ability to route orders directly from RealTick to such major market participants gives RealTick users a key advantage in the capital markets, and brokers access to institutions in a true multi-broker environment," he adds.

BNP Paribas joins other recent additions to Townsend's global multi-broker network, including BNY ConvergEx, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Instinet, Merrill Lynch and UBS.