The smart way into the US market for Aussie company

By Peter Dinham
Thursday, 01 October 2009 18:25

IT Industry - Market

Australian market surveillance systems vendor, SMARTS Group, is to open an office in the United States to coincide with the release of the US version of its broker surveillance platform.
 

SMARTS, which has a global market for its market surveillance systems, says it now derives 95 percent of its revenue from international securities exchanges, regulators and broking firms, and will open its office in New York as it has “significant growth opportunities” in the US market.

“The US market presents significant growth opportunities for SMARTS. We now have two US securities exchange customers, BATS and NADEX, and in late October we will launch a US version of our SMARTS.broker platform,” the company CEO, Dr Andreas Furche, said.

According to Dr Furche, SMARTS.broker is currently being piloted by a leading US investment house, and “we are encouraged by the initial feedback from our pilot customer. They are impressed by the comprehensiveness and usability of the system and recognise the advantages of partnering with SMARTS’ as the global leader in market surveillance systems.”

Dr Furche said that, whilst selling to international exchanges and regulators for over 15 years and broking firms for the last five, SMARTS has taken a conservative approach to entering the US market.

“Our US strategy has been to build upon our leadership position in Europe and Asia which has established the credibility and international reputation required by US firms to support their technology investment decision.”

SMARTS expects the US will become one of their biggest if not the biggest market by 2012, according to Dr Furche, and he said that “while we have a centralised organisational model with development, technical support and administration located in Australia, we acknowledge the most effective business development strategy is to have customer interface teams close to the customers.

“This is the model we adopted in Europe where we have a presence of ten sales and customer support professionals, establishing Europe as our most successful region.”

On October 28, SMARTS will launch the US version of  its broker system at the Australian Consulate in New York on 28 October, following development of the product over the last 12 months with a focus on compliance and market integrity.  Dr Furche said that with the attention on market integrity following the Global Financial Crisis, SMARTS believed it was the right time to invest in the US market.

SMARTS has appointed Michael Karbouris, currently director of business development for the company’s broking business in the Asia Pacific, to lead the US operations.