With this expansion, regional and global financial firms will have fast access to the quality market data content and solutions for which ACTIV has already become known in North America and Asia.

To support the company's European expansion, ACTIV has hired David Hann as the managing director EMEA, and relocated David O'Connor, European operations manager, to drive sales, expand market presence and ensure strategic content coverage to address demand. Customers around the globe will be able access ACTIV's flexible market data delivery options, including the company's North American and Asian low-latency market data, for trading advantage in capital markets around the world.

Housed at Equinix's state-of-the-art London-Slough (LD4) International Business Exchange (IBX®) datacenter in Slough, U.K., near many of the major European exchanges' trading engines, ACTIV allows customers to co-locate within the facility for even faster trading access and distribution. In addition to North American and Asian market data, the company will initially support European equities, derivatives, fixed income and news data from Deutsche Boerse, LSE, Nasdaq OMX and NYSE Euronext, with plans for further content coverage driven by customer demand to enable global and local customers with a full range of quality market data. ACTIV's team of reliable data experts provide the combination of customer support and flexible service delivery options, including direct or consolidated multicast datafeeds, to offer continuous support for truly global trading.

"With ACTIV's reputation for providing high-quality and cost-effective market data management solutions, I'm very excited to sign on and lead the company's European efforts," said David Hann, EMEA managing director of ACTIV Financial. "There's a huge opportunity for ACTIV in Europe to enable financial firms with the regional and global support for low-latency market data - no other company has the technology, expertisgy, expertise and support the market demands."

With more than 300 customers around the globe, including market makers, hedge funds, brokers and trading systems providers, ACTIV's market data management solutions are tried, tested and validated. Founded in 2002, ACTIV is the only company that provides a front-to-back solution for value-add market data content and high-performance technologies. Unlike other legacy market data systems, ACTIV was architected from the ground up, taking the latest technologies of the day, included hardware acceleration and event processing, to address the market data paradigm - balancing cost with speed, reliability and quality data.

"European customers have serious data problems, and we're investing in the critical infrastructure and top-level leaders to manage this colossal market opportunity," said Frank Piasecki, co-founder and president, ACTIV Financial. "Having a leader of David Hann's caliber is a huge testament of ACTIV's value proposition. With long-time ACTIV veteran David O'Connor providing support out of London, we have the team, expertise and infrastructure in place to succeed."

David Hann joins ACTIV from Interactive Data, where he served as general manager real time services EMEA, and was instrumental in assisting the electronic trading community with their data requirements. With more than 20 years of sales, marketing and management experience in the financial sector, he has led teams in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Hann has an in-depth knowledge of datafeeds and the market data industry having worked previously at Telerate, GAINS (a subsidiary of Tullett Prebon) and Madge Networks.

David O'Connor, a native of Ireland and five-year veteran at ACTIV, has been relocated from New York to London to manage the company's new operations. He has more than 13 years experience in the market data management world. Prior to ACTIV, O'Connor worked as a data feed network manager at AT Financial, which was purchased by Primark Financial, then subsequently acquired by Thomson Financial.