Nasdaq Acquires Glide

The New York exchange has acquired technology company Glide Technologies in a move to boost its corporate solutions division.



Glide Technologies is a provider of corporate communications and reputation management services and software. The company’s operations will be integrated into Nasdaq OMX Corporate Solutions unit, which helps companies manage risk, improve efficiency and increase transparency. Glide will add media monitoring and measurement and content management.



“As the corporate landscape continues to change, we see the PR, IR and governance roles increasingly converging,” said Demetrios Skalkotos, senior vice president at Nasdaq OMX Corporate Solutions in a statement. “This has led to the need for an integrated suite of communications solutions rather than a variety of siloed product offerings. Our mission as an exchange has always been to help our customers be more efficient, strategic and transparent companies, and this acquisition will help us continue to deliver on that promise.”



A request to Nasdaq for comment was not immediately returned.



The move to acquire Glide Technologies comes the week after the New York exchange operator teamed up with South American counterpart Bolsa Electronica de Chile to offer its market technologies, exchange trading and advisory services. BEC joined over 70 other exchanges spanning 50 countries in using market technology provided by New York’s Nasdaq.



In addition to providing technology, through the alliance, Nasdaq will also advise BEC on its efforts to cross-list shares, develop new indices, improve existing indices and begin a case study to create peso-dollar futures for trading on Nasdaq OMX exchanges. It will also assist BEC in global promotion and marketing efforts.



Last month, Bolsa Electronica de Chile’s South American neighbor BM&F Bovespa came to an agreement with Nasdaq to use its Smarts Integrity market surveillance platform to provide added market monitoring capabilities. Aside from BM&F Bovespa, which is the largest stock exchange in Latin America, Bovespa Market Supervision, its Brazilian self-regulatory organization, will also share in using the trade monitoring technology.



Nasdaq acquired Smarts, an Australian market surveillance technology provider, in July 2010. Smarts develops technology which records market movements for surveillance purposes. In December 2010, Nasdaq also acquired FTEN, which provides risk management technology through the screening of the credit risk of traders before they trade. The moves were part of a strategy employed by several exchange operators, including rival NYSE Euronext, to diversify their operations outside the traditional core business of matching trades.