Under the terms of the arrangement, TNS and Peresys will partner to ensure seamless trading counterpart connectivity for FIX-based transactions between South African buy-side and broker companies and their trading partners in Europe, Asia and North America.

The partnership will give Peresys' South African customers the ability to establish high-speed, secure and reliable connectivity with over 1,000 financial community end-points that provide access to over 400 financial institutions, comprising buy and sell-side organisations, market data and software vendors, exchanges and alternative trading venues around the world.

Uniquely, "on net" participants in the enlarged community will be able to connect to each other within three days.

Ashley Mendelowitz, Managing Director, Peresys commented: "This partnership is a vital part of our efforts to make the PerFIX Business Process Network (PerFIX BPN), powered by Cameron Systems, the premier trading gateway into South Africa's financial markets and to ensure our clients benefit from the full functionality available within our trading and messaging solutions.

"TNS is widely recognised as one of the world's leading FIX-enabled networks for electronic trading. Acting on demand amongst brokers and asset managers, the link fits with our strategy of giving customers choice and flexibility in how they access their offshore counterparties."

Peresys is South Africa's number one provider of technology solutions to fund managers, hedge funds, exchanges and exchange members. Operating in the equities, bonds and derivatives markets, Peresys specialises in providing FIX related services including market access and order-routing, as well as securities lending solutions, integration services and research dissemination.

The Bond Exchange of South Africa (BESA) and the JSE Securities Exchange run Peresys applications and the country's top twenty-five sell sides and leading tier-one asset managers are connected to the PerFIX BPN.

Allying with TNS' Secure Trading Extranet will give Peresys access to prospective new customers and grant TNS' customer base across North America, Europe, SE Asia and Australasia access to the African continent.

Ashley Mendelowitz said: "The connection with TNS draws on synergies between the two companies, which have seen both champion early adoption of the FIX protocol. FIX is being embraced more and more, not only in equities, but in the fixed income and derivatives spaces as well, and as exchange controls are relaxed further in South Africa we expect bidirectional electronic order flow to increase exponentially."

Via TNS' Secure Trading Extranet, participating firms will be able to submit indications-of-interest, execute direct trades and perform other FIX and non-FIX based transactions with any participating trading partner.

Deploying TNS' IP network for wider applications including market data and voice services and wide-area networks, TNS can help financial institutions achieve straight-through-processing.

Alex Walker, vice president, TNS Financial Markets commented: "We are delighted to be linking up with Peresys. The partnership supports TNS' goals of expanding internationally, through organic growth, acquisition and alliances with third parties."