Appital

Appital launches Insights to redefine how the buyside engage to unlock unique liquidity

An industry first, Appital Insights™ allows buyside institutions to assess the viability of executing larger ADV orders without alerting the market

• Appital Insights™ empowers traders and PMs to gain exposure to liquidity events in relevant equities that meet their minimum ADV or pricing thresholds

• They are no longer constrained by placing large orders directly into the market and risk information leakage or price erosion

• Buyside traders and PMs can now be confident that they will be able to successfully execute large or illiquid equity trades before entering the market via Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™

London, 6 September 2023: Appital, the peer-to-peer price discovery and liquidity sourcing technology for asset managers, announces the launch of Appital Insights™, an industry first initiative that unlocks liquidity unavailable via traditional electronic trading venues.

Appital Insights™ allows buyside institutions to assess the viability of executing larger ADV orders without risking information leakage or price erosion. Additionally, traders and PMs can gain exposure to liquidity events in relevant equities meeting their minimum ADV or pricing thresholds.

Appital Insights™ expands on existing bookbuilding capabilities via Appital Turquoise Bookbuilder™, which has already brought a historically highly manual and opaque process into an automated, electronic platform with the ability to execute large volumes on the regulated Turquoise MTF. Appital Insights™ goes a step further and provides real-time, origination alerts to unlock cross-border deal flow opportunities for the buyside, ahead of any price formation or deal launch.

Data held within Appital Insights™ provides automated feedback on live positions and the likelihood of driving liquidity in any relevant name, giving traders and PMs the confidence that they will find deal contras before they proceed to launching a bookbuild.

Mark Badyra, CEO, Appital, said: “Launching Appital Insights™ is the next step in our evolution and complementary to the existing price and deal formation process. Buyside firms no longer have to enter the market with a larger ADV order without the confidence that the trade will complete at a single shape and price which they are comfortable with.

​​Unlike current buyside trading technology, Appital Insights™does not begin to match or execute orders sequentially, therefore users can enter indications confidently in the knowledge that their actions have no chance of showing any signal to the market. Only once Appital Insights™has found a group of relevant asset managers that have a high likelihood of forming a shape and price in a given stock, are they directed to Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™.”

Appital went live with European stocks in May 2023 and has seen deal flow opportunities worth $200m in the platform since then, with an average opportunity size of 2.5 days ADV.

Since launching Appital Turquoise Bookbuilder™ in August 2022, Appital has onboarded 25 asset management clients, who manage a combined $12trn AUM. A further 40 asset management firms are currently going through the onboarding process, jointly managing $28trn AUM.

Existing EMS integrations as well as integration with Bloomberg IOIAs are a driving factor in onboarding an ever-growing community of asset managers to the platform, as they seek to access hard to find liquidity in a market for size, directly within their existing trading infrastructure.

Matt Jefford, Appital’s Head of Liquidity Solutions, added: “We have all witnessed venue fragmentation and a decline in block liquidity, with shrinking order sizes and exposure to predatory trading behaviour. However, true block liquidity still resides with the buyside. This is the unique liquidity we are unlocking with Appital Insights™.

The buyside is no longer constrained by placing large orders into a block venue to find the other side of the trade, while risking information leakage. With Appital Insights™, they can get live feedback from our platform that there is a contra on the other side, stimulating liquidity formation at that point in time.”

Appital Insights™connects directly to a traders EMS; buyside traders can now receive automated feedback on how they can intelligently source liquidity for the orders on their pad.

FlexTrade is the first EMS provider to integrate with Appital Insights™.

Andy Mahoney, MD, FlexTrade added: "We are delighted to further extend our collaboration with Appital to bring their innovative new offering, Appital Insights™ into FlexTRADER EMS. Delivering actionable feedback around the likelihood to drive meaningful and unique liquidity via Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™ without alerting the market and within their EMS cockpit, alongside other liquidity options, creates the real-time view of the market, which is crucial to optimising trading decisions.”

All information in the Appital platform is actively monitored and platform misuse is disincentivised through the provision of data to all users, which allows them to choose the type of firms or liquidity they interact with, and build trust.

ENDS

About Appital Appital, the equity markets technology solution, unlocks latent liquidity and provides enhanced bookbuilding capabilities to institutional investors.

Appital allows the buyside community to gain greater exposure to deal flow and execution opportunities they have not been able to access before and interact with like-minded institutions in the liquidity discovery and price formation process. Asset Managers are able to proactively source cross-border liquidity or interact with natural liquidity that is relevant to them, ranging from large cap equities to highly illiquid, small and mid-cap stocks.

The Appital platform efficiently drives a bookbuilding process, providing institutional investors with opportunities to execute large volumes, often in excess of multiple days of ADV, with minimal market impact or risk of price erosion.

Appital Insights™ allows buyside institutions to gain feedback on the likelihood to launch a successful bookbuild, without alerting anyone within the market or risking price erosion, as well as allowing traders and PMs to gain passive exposure in equities they care about when considering minimum ADV ambitions and/or pricing thresholds.

Appital’s deal distribution methodology is highly efficient, unbiased and unconflicted, delivering a fair outcome for all market participants. Members of Appital’s buyside community have access to real-time visibility, full transparency and maximum control over the bookbuilding and deal distribution process.

The Appital platform is easy to access, embedded and integrated with leading EMS providers, and executing brokers Instinet and Bernstein. Deals are executed through the Turquoise MTF, via a single point of access and with seamless straight-through processing to over 20 settlement venues. For more information please visit our website and follow us on Twitter @AppitalHQ and LinkedIn.