FTEN Raises Series B

FTEN Inc., a New York-based provider of a direct market access platform, has received an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. 

PRESS RELEASE

FTEN, Inc. (“FTEN”) announced today that Merrill Lynch (MER), Goldman Sachs (GS), J.P. Morgan (JPM) and Credit Suisse (CS) have provided a strategic investment to accelerate expansion of FTEN’s risk management, compliance, high-frequency trading gateway, and market data offerings for multi-asset class and multi-prime broker sponsored access in Europe and Asia. The investment by these leading global financial institutions is recognition of FTEN’s technology and its ability to provide best-of-breed solutions. The Series B Preferred Stock funding will help FTEN continue to establish significant international relationships as it extends its global footprint for multi-asset class and multi-prime broker offerings beyond its existing strength in the US and European equities, options and futures markets. Currently, FTEN’s technology processes over 20% of the US daily equities volume and risk management calculations.

Ted Myerson, President & Founder of FTEN, said “This investment furthers the company’s strategic plans to accelerate global growth in response to unprecedented client demand. Global markets require FTEN’s more sophisticated real-time risk management and compliance solutions, broker-neutral high frequency trading gateway, and its approach to delivering market data to meet the increase in exchange volumes and evolving regulatory requirements. We see the investment by these prestigious global financial institutions as a clear endorsement of FTEN’s solutions, our client service and our ability to meet the demands of current and prospective partners and clients worldwide.”

“The investment was structured as a minority interest transaction in order to increase FTEN’s breadth and strength in the global financial securities marketplace while maintaining its independent governance,” said Steve McLaughlin, Managing Partner at Financial Technology Partners (www.ftpartners.com), who advised FTEN on this transaction and has been an advisor to FTEN for more than six years.

FTEN will maintain its independence and neutrality so it can continue to work with each and every partner at the strategic level, whether or not they are an investor, to understand and achieve their business objectives and to respond to the marketplace with agility and speed. Myerson continued. “FTEN is profitable, cash flow positive and debt free. This investment and the partners behind it allow FTEN to significantly accelerate our global expansion because we are no longer limited by organic growth to finance expansion throughout European and Asian markets. We will increase our investment in infrastructure, product development and staff to help expedite achievement of our long term objectives at the same time other vendors will be cutting back on expenditures during the current economic downturn.”

About FTEN (www.FTEN.com):

As the preeminent independent solutions provider of ASP-based mission critical financial technology applications and fully-managed on-boarding and support services, FTEN enables prime brokers, clearing firms, broker-dealers, hedge funds and proprietary trading groups to achieve greater access, speed and control through scalable, low-latency routing, real-time intra-day risk management, compliance, surveillance and market data signal services. Each trading day, FTEN’s technology processes millions of securities transactions globally, including over 20% of the entire US Equities daily volume. This release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any securities of FTEN.