Fintech
Citi announces strategic investment in FinTech Cicada
By Delisha Fernandes
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Citi has made a strategic minority investment in Cicadaa Greenwich-based FinTech, to facilitate institutional electronic trading of Mexican government bonds.
The investment was made by Citi Markets’ Strategic Investments unit, which is responsible for sourcing and executing strategic investments related to Citi’s Markets franchise. Citi will also act as a liquidity provider for the trading platform.
“We are excited to invest in Cicada. The trading platform technology, together with the Citi partnership, has the potential to improve the efficiency of the multi-billion dollar Mexican fixed income market,” he said Aldo Alvarez, head of LatAm at Citi’s Markets Strategic Investments unit.
Cicada has created an innovative all-to-all electronic alternative trading system (ATS) that helps buy-side and sell-side global institutional market participants trade Mexican government fixed income securities without the need for a pre-existing trading relationship . The ATS is registered with the SEC and the broker-dealer operations of Cicada Securities LLC (a subsidiary of Cicada technologies Inc.) are regulated by FINRA.
Cicada allows electronic trading of 28 Mexican government bonds, including nominal fixed rate notes (Mbono) and inflation-linked notes (UDIBono) that can be settled in Indeval, Euroclear or Clearstream. The company is also looking to enable trading of Cetes (Mexican Treasury bills), TIIEs (Mexican interest rate swaps), Mexican corporate bonds and other emerging market government bonds.
Ignacio Tovar, co-founder of Cicadasaid: “Traders are rapidly embracing the technology and currently 15 renowned institutions are active on the platform and 10 are in the process of joining. Since launch last year, trading volume on the platform has grown 15 times.”
Cicada aims to accelerate the adoption of e-trading via the Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) and Request for Quotes (RFQ) protocols. The platform also offers automation tools for buy-side and liquidity providers, efficient trade execution, connectivity to post-trade services, and analysis of real-time and historical bond price data.
Through investments in startups and early-stage companies, MSI promotes the development and adoption of new technologies, market structures and solutions to drive innovation.