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CEO CHAT: Omega Securities Debotte Targets 10% Market Share
Traders Magazine Online News, March 13, 2017
Sean Debotte, Chief Executive Officer of Canada’s Omega Securities, operator of the Omega and Lynx ATS’, has set his sights high- looking to growth his market share to 10 percent within the next 18 months. Debotte sat down with Traders Magazine recently to explain just how his two venues will achieve this.
Omega and Lynx operate in field where, Nasdaq Canada and the behemoth TMX Group’s multiple exchanges garner the lion’s share of press. But that’s the way Debotte likes it – moving stealthily like the animal his newer ATS Lynx, formed in 2014, is named after. Debotte told Traders Magazine that his two marketplaces, Omega (with its inverted taker-maker pricing scheme) and Lynx (with a unique Pay as You Go scheme) have now achieved between 5.5% and 6% of total continuous Canadian trading volume and are embarking on a new technology initiative to keep the trades moving.
Sean Debotte
For comparison, Nasdaq’s CX2 which trades 3.5% of the total Canadian market. TMX Alpha trades 4.5%, while Neo and CSE control between 1% and 2%. TSX and Venture, Canada’s largest exchanges see roughly 55% to 60% of all trading activity.
“We’ve completely redesigned our technology from the ground-up, with an entirely new system and network architecture, including optimized software, connectivity and matching facility,” Debotte began. “Our goal is to focus on three key areas for our customers - reliability, robustness, thru-put capacity, and redundancy.”
So how does he plan to do it?
As Debotte tells it, the decision was made back in winter 2016 to upgrade Omega and Lynx technology and co-locate at the newest Toronto co-location facility, Equinix’s TR2. This is the same facility where two of Nasdaq’s three marketplaces are located as well as the CSE. Equinix customers have direct access to Torix (Toronto Internet Exchange) and can interconnect directly to customers and partners in their digital supply chain. The Equinix metro Toronto International Business Exchange data centers consist of two buildings with approximately 142,000 square feet (13,000+ square meters) of colocation space.
By moving to TR2, Debotte can not only keep his trading speed fast but also maintain low data costs. Omega currently charges C$2.85 for its market data, compared to C$15 for Aequitas and C$40 that Nasdaq Canada charges.
“Omega ATS and Lynx ATS will be able to provide the Canadian marketplace with fast, price/broker/time priority trading platform where customers will be able to trade at or better than the CBBO (Canadian Best Bid and Offer) at competitive commission rates,” Debotte said. “And that is just the beginning.”
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