By Opeyemi Issa InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE) – The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Wednesday said it will unveil a new Trading Platform with NASDAQ OMX on April 24 2012.

This is contained in a Statement by Joseph Kadiri, Corporate Communications of the Nigeria’s Exchange and made available to www.investadvocateng.com in Lagos Nigeria.

The Statement said that NSE will be signing on the trading system of the Multinational Financial Services Powerhouse, NASDAQ OMX System; as it embarks on upgrading its current Trading Platform to the cutting-edge NASDAQ X-Stream- a high performance, robust and multi-market matching Trading Engine.

According to Adeolu Bajomo, Executive Director (ED), Market Operations and Technology (MOT) of NSE, a little over a year ago, NASDAQ OMX, along with two other Global Exchanges, responded to The NSE’s proposal to provide a Market leading Trading Platform for the Bourse.

“The NSE undertook a detailed and robust evaluation process, leading to the selection of NASDAQ OMX X-Stream system, currently used by over 20 Exchanges around the world and reputed to be one of the leading Trading Platforms in the Market” Bajomo said.

Bajomo affirmed that the Nigeria’s Exchange and NASDAQ OMX performed a joint design study between September and November 2010 and in July 2011, covering requirements, project timeline and risks system components; servers and connectivity; installation, training, testing and go live support among other issues. “X-stream will replace the current trading system, Horizon. Equities, fully functional Bond Market and ETFs will come in phase one; while the introduction of Derivatives to the NSE will come in the second phase” he said.

Bajomo affirmed that the Implementation of a new Trading Platform is one of the key cornerstones in delivering the full potential of our Market; affording us the tools to deliver our target of five products in five years, scale up our services for growth and enhance the investor experience of doing business in the Nigerian Capital Market (NCM).

“The new system will also improve transparency and provide efficient price discovery” Bajomo affirmed.

“The platform, will among others, enable investors, through their Brokers to have real-time access to Market Prices, their portfolios and execute Market Orders in near real-time from anywhere and on a wide range of devices including Smartphones.

The official signing of the contract with NASDAQ OMX to provision a new Trading Platform for The Exchange will be a major milestone in ushering in a new way of conducting business in the Nigerian Capital Market” Bajomo said.