Nezu Asia Limited, a Hong Kong-based hedge fund with over $1 billion in assets under management, recently deployed Portware's Enterprise trading system. The Portware solution supports Nezu's trade process from order management to trade management and execution across equities, futures and options.

"From a trading and execution standpoint we are using Portware to route orders to over 30 electronic broker destinations," says Nick Longcroft, partner at Nezu Asia Limited. "Portware's multi-tiered trade management architecture is ideally suited to our complex fund structure, while the system's advanced trading functionality gives us unparalleled control over all aspects of trade execution."

The hedge fund also uses Portware's integrated order management functionality for better communication between portfolio managers and traders. "As a firm that manages multiple funds and strategies we wanted a system that could help our traders and portfolio manager work together more efficiently," says Longcroft.

Prior to the Portware implementation, Nezu Asia Limited was using Bloomberg for its electronic trading and a different system for order management. "We are focused on minimizing trading costs and driving workflow efficiencies," says Longcroft. "Previously, we used disparate trading and order management systemsPortware Enterprise provides a consolidated suite of execution and order management tools in a single package."

Longcroft says the Portware solution has been deployed locally and is tightly integrated with the firm's existing trade workflow, risk and market data infrastructure.

"With a pan-Asian trading strategy such as ours, we have to satisfy a vast array of regional trading and reporting requirements, for not only the primary markets (Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Australia) but the emerging markets of Asia-Pacific (Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, India and Mainland China) as well," explains Longcroft. "From trade-level issues like navigating different types of trades across the ID Markets, to a variety of allocation and trade settlement requirements between the different markets, Portware's design allows us to manage these complexities seamlessly."

Scott DePetris, global head of accounts at Portware, says that the company has made a big push into the Asia-Pacific region with the opening of its Hong Kong office last summer. "We're seeing a massive uptick in the amount of volume being traded over there by existing clients," he says. "The adoption of our platform and platforms like ours over there has been very fast."