The new offering includes several of Bank of America Merrill Lynch's most popular algorithms, including implementation shortfall and VWAP.

"Interest and liquidity in Brazilian stocks have risen significantly this year and as a result our international investor clients are asking for more sophisticated trading tools to access this market," said Steve Schneider, head of Latin America Equities at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "We are also seeing increasing demand from our local high-touch trading clients, many of whom are now looking forward to using these new trading tools in Brazil," he added.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has adapted its algorithmic trading suite for use in more than 30 countries, and since combining earlier this year, the group has made more than 50 specific enhancements to its core algorithmic offering, yielding improved performance for clients.(1)

"We are well-versed in customizing our offering for new markets, and relied heavily on local trader feedback when fine-tuning our algos for the Bovespa," said Lee Morakis, head of Execution Services Sales at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "Our clients now have a robust new channel for accessing Brazil's equity markets, complementing our full-service sales, trading and research operation in Sao Paolo."

Bank of America Merrill Lynch's award-winning algorithmic trading platform provides a suite of fully anonymous, flexible algorithms with access to unique forms of liquidity, including 15 core equity and six core options algorithms. Clients can customize algorithms to conform to their goals and benchmark risk tolerance, and use them to express views on alpha horizon, momentum vs. mean reversion, and stock performance in absolute or relative terms.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is a leading global providerovider of equity and options trading, sales and research services to mutual funds, hedge funds, broker-dealers, pensions, endowments and other institutions. Its algorithmic trading platform has earned awards for price improvement, anonymity, ease of use and cost.(2) Bank of America Merrill Lynch is a member of more than 80 exchanges worldwide and has maintained a presence in Brazil for more than 50 years.