JERSEY CITY, NJ, May 15, 2012—Mantara, Inc., a provider of advanced ultra-low latency trading solutions, today announced that it has acquired UNX LLC, a supplier of innovative broker-neutral EMS technology. High-frequency traders and others can now benefit from access to an open and flexible EMS coupled with Mantara’s flagship pre-trade risk functionality and ultra-low latency direct market access.

UNX’s Catalyst^® execution management system, provides an open, scalable broker-neutral EMS and electronic trading platform that streamlines trader workflow with seamless access to its companion Marketplace that hosts diversified products and services from 3rd-party vendors, information providers, exchanges, ATSs, and broker-dealers.

Designed for flexibility, performance and usability, Catalyst’s open-API framework delivers a fully extensible and customizable desktop trading environment. Its powerful front end enables traders to extend their capabilities and easily customize or create functionality to achieve trading objectives and execute strategies. The Marketplace provides a virtual financial apps store for research, news and media feeds, and trading tools, algorithms, order routing and analytics from brokerages and investment banks.

The purchase comes amidst an industry-wide trend towards independent, cost-effective, broker-neutral, cloud solutions that can be rapidly deployed and provide flexibility, ease-of-customization and help to reduce trading costs. Mantara takes this trend one step forward and incorporates the demand for high performance as a key requirement for traders today.

Tabb Group’s Director of Research, Adam Sussman, commented on the news, “Financial institutions are finding it harder than ever to be first to the market, both in terms of low-latency solutions but also how long it takes to deploy. Institutions need an infrastructure that lets them respond to market dynamics, regulatory intervention and client demands more quickly than ever, developments like Mantara’s aim to do that.”

Known for its ultra-low latency expressWay™ infrastructure, Mantara has gained strong support across the high-frequency trading community with its comprehensive pre-trade risk offering experiencing rising popularity among market participants looking to meet recent and anticipated pre-trade regulatory requirements and manage risk across multiple trading venues.

“Driven by client demand for a next generation EMS coupled with our state-of-the-art risk system, we sought technology based on a shared philosophy,” said Mantara President and CEO, Michael Chin.  “UNX’s innovative Catalyst suite shares the same guiding principles underlying our ultra-low latency technology.”

Further commenting on the union, Chin added, “We are extremely excited by the prospects for our combined offering and believe that together we bring a compelling solution that meets the rapidly evolving trading and compliance requirements of the buy and sell side amidst this challenging market environment.”

Mantara and UNX share strong product and client synergies, delivering independent, broker-neutral software-as-a-service solutions, based on intuitive, easily deployable, open and flexible technology. The shared client base represents a solid balance of broker-dealers, hedge funds and propriety traders committed to implementing next-generation, customizable solutions that leverage the latest technology advancements.

Operating out of Los Angeles and New York, the UNX team will be fully integrated across Mantara’s client-facing organization with a unified focus on delivering best-of-breed, future-ready solutions to a rapidly expanding global client base.

Broadhaven Capital Partners served as financial advisor and Crowell & Moring served as legal counsel to UNX. Lowenstein Sandler served as legal counsel to Mantara.

About Mantara

Headquartered in Jersey City, NJ, Mantara, Inc. is transforming securities trading worldwide through the development and delivery of integrated ultra-low latency desktop trading and pre- at and post-trade risk solutions. With its next-generation, broker-neutral Catalyst EMS and expressWay trading infrastructure, Mantara is paving the way with innovative solutions that meet the rapidly evolving requirements of the global trading community. For more information on Mantara, visit www.mantara.com

Mantara, expressWay and Catalyst are registered trademarks of Mantara, Inc. in the United States.

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Media Contact
Kristen Fuller
Mantara, Inc.
Tel: +1.650.796.4884
kristen@mantara.com

Hands-on administrator with financial industry experience in a fast-paced environment, supporting a low-latency trading management platform for high-frequency trading. The ideal candidate will combine Linux and Windows admin skills with scripting skills (Perl, Bash, Python).

Responsibilities

• Perform standard Windows/Linux Systems Administration in multiple environments and datacenters
• Datacenter installation and maintenance
• Windows administration both for servers and office desktops

Requirements

• 3-5 years of IT experience
• Strong interpersonal and communications skills
• Ability to work a flexible schedule involving some night and weekend work, including response to off-hour problems

Skills

• Linux: Red Hat and other flavors
• Windows server and workstation up to 7/2008 and related software
• Perl, Shell and Batch scripting
• Monitoring via SNMP
• Linux environment utilities: Samba, DNS, LDAP, DHCP, NTP, etc.
• Experience with storage technologies
• E-mail administration
• Web Site Management
• SSL knowledge and certification management
• Hardware knowledge including HP multi-socket servers
• Sybase database knowledge is a plus
• Networking skills are a plus

Responsibilities

• Perform standard Windows/Linux Systems Administration in multiple environments and datacenters
• Datacenter installation and maintenance
• Windows administration both for servers and office desktops

Requirements

• 5-7 years of IT experience
• Strong interpersonal and communications skills
• Ability to work a flexible schedule involving some night and weekend work, including response to off-hour problems

Skills

• Linux: Red Hat and other flavors
• Windows server and workstation up to 7/2008 and related software
• Perl, Shell and Batch scripting
• Monitoring via SNMP
• Linux environment utilities: Samba, DNS, LDAP, DHCP, NTP, etc.
• Experience with storage technologies
• E-mail administration
• Website management
• SSL knowledge and certification management
• Hardware knowledge including HP multi-socket servers
• Sybase database knowledge is a plus
• Networking skills are a plus
• Financial industry experience a big plus (working at an exchange, hedge fund, dark pool…)
• Zenoss monitoring software administration experience a big plus

The environment is a mix of C, C++ and C# on Windows and Linux.  Developers have a choice of desktop platforms, but deliver code that is built across all our supported platforms.

The right candidate has demonstrated commitment, drive and enthusiasm, and is ready to join our NYC metro-located team to apply and develop his or her skills.

Requirements

• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related discipline. Relevant technical experience may substitute for formal education.
• Three to five years of experience developing software applications in a commercial team environment
• Good C# experience
• WPF / XAML
• Network protocols, based on good TCP/IP knowledge
• Threads
• Good algorithmic and design skills
• Good team skills
• Good toolset knowledge and experience
• Demonstrated commitment to delivering on-time, top-quality results
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively in a small company environment

Desirable

• Linux/Unix experience
• C++ development experience
• Java experience
• Financial industry experience working with real-time Market Data and Order Management
• Low-latency, high-performance system experience
• Knowledge of trading systems and business

The environment is a mix of C, C++ and C# on Windows and Linux.  Developers have a choice of desktop platforms, but deliver code that is built across all our supported platforms.

The right candidate has demonstrated skills, commitment, drive and enthusiasm, and is ready to join our NYC metro-located team to apply and develop his or her skills.

Requirements

• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related discipline. Relevant technical experience may substitute for formal education.
• Three to five years of experience developing software applications in a commercial team environment
• Server-side C++, ideally on a Linux (RHEL or SuSE) or Unix platform
• TCP/IP, Berkeley sockets API, network protocols
• Threads
• STL / Boost
• Good algorithmic and design skills
• Good team skills
• Good toolset knowledge and experience
• Demonstrated commitment to delivering on-time, top-quality results
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively in a small company environment

Desirable

• Experience with IP multicast
• C# Windows development experience
• Java experience
• Financial industry experience working with real-time Market Data and Order Management
• Low-latency, high-performance system experience
• Knowledge of trading systems and business

Responsibilites

• Manage the day-to-day operation and maintenance of the production low-latency network environment
• Liaise with application and client service teams to gather requirements, design and implement resilient and secure network solutions
• Maintain and deploy multicast technologies and feeds from major exchanges like Nasdaq, SFTI, BATS and Direct Edge along with normalized feeds for low-latency trading applications
• Troubleshoot complex network problems including performance analysis, protocol problems, and network failures with the use of packet capture and protocol analysis tools
• Provide thorough documentation of low-latency network, including creation of relevant diagrams
• Administer and support network management tools for network and latency monitoring 

Requirements

• 5-7 years of network engineering experience building and maintaining low-latency network infrastructure for high-frequency trading
• Experience designing, administering, and troubleshooting multicast trading networks
• Strong knowledge of troubleshooting network related issues
• Knowledge in reading and interpreting data packet captures of Market Data and Order Entry connectivity
• Must be able to measure latency across the trading cycle using monitoring tools
• Strong knowledge of  network protocols (TCP/IP, Multicast(PIM Sparse and Dense), OSPF, BGP, and RIP
• Ability to work with collocation vendors for high-frequency and low-latency market data and execution connectivity

Skills

• Experience with Core routing and switching design, configuration, troubleshooting, and usage of recommended best practices of Cisco, Juniper, and Arista equipment
• TCP/IP fundamentals
• Extensive understanding of layer 2 network protocols such as Spanning tree, trunking protocols, and VLAN configurations
• Extensive understanding of routing protocols such as BGP, OSPF, PIM Multicast routing, MSDP, and RIP
• Understanding of managing client connectivity over dedicated connections, VPN, and Proximity hosting
• Experience with Network Management system for real-time management and proactive monitoring of all network equipment
• Experience with network security using firewalls and IPSEC for remote access solutions
• Experience with DNS, SMTP, NFS, SNMP and configuration management tools
• Knowledge of scripting (perl, sh or python) to automate tasks is a plus
• Experience with configuring and maintain an IPv6 network connectivity

To apply please reference the position title and submit a cover letter and resume to jobs@mantara.com

In a market climate characterized by evolving regulatory requirements and looming compliance deadlines, Mantara’s products are experiencing exceptionally strong reception by those looking to apply high-speed pre-trade risk controls across a mesh of counterparties and trade facilities. Leveraging its proven ultra-low latency trading technology coupled with its advanced pre-trade risk functionality, Mantara’s solutions enable traders to meet compliance requirements while maintaining competitive access to liquidity.

Mantara’s ultra-low latency expressWay™ trading suite offers pre-trade risk control and direct market access to exchanges, brokers, and buy-side participants enabling them to meet risk compliance requirements with near-zero impact on trading latency. Building upon its proven high-speed execution competency across asset classes and trading venues, Mantara’s users can seamlessly trade and manage risk across multiple venues with minimal impact to latency.

“We are excited to be able to support the growing needs of Canada’s HFT community by providing a direct presence in its backyard,” said Michael Chin, president and CEO of Mantara. “As Canada’s trading epicenter, Toronto provides a vibrant base for Mantara’s Canadian operations and we look forward to supporting the thriving capital markets trading activity in this important global center.”

Mantara’s Toronto office is located at 100 King Street West, Suite 5700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5X 1C7. Call (416) 915-3104 or contact sales@mantara.com for more information.

About Mantara

Headquartered in Jersey City, NJ, Mantara, Inc. is transforming securities trading worldwide through the development and delivery of integrated, ultra-low latency, high-speed trading and analytics solutions. With its next-generation expressWay trading platform, Mantara is delivering innovative solutions to the financial trading community. For more information on Mantara, visit www.mantara.com

Mantara and expressWay are registered trademarks of Mantara, Inc. in the United States.

Media Contact
Kristen Fuller
Mantara, Inc.
Tel: 650.796.4884
kristen@mantara.com

Against a backdrop of growing market fragmentation, proliferation of trade venues, and impending regulatory deadlines, Mantara’s products are enjoying strong market reception among entities responding to these conditions by applying high-speed pre-trade risk controls across a complex mesh of counterparties and trade facilities. Leveraging its proven low-latency trading technology, Mantara’s solutions address these challenges with near-zero impact on trade latency, enabling traders to meet compliance requirements while maintaining competitive access to liquidity.

“We are extremely pleased with Mantara’s momentum,” said Mohr Davidow General Partner, Jim Smith. “Management’s leadership and strategy execution has yielded solid results and the investor corps is stepping up to support an accelerated growth plan for global expansion and to exploit product development efforts that will continue to position Mantara at the forefront of the ultra-low latency race.”

Mantara’s ultra-low latency expressWay™ trading suite, offers pre-trade risk control and direct market access to exchanges, brokers, and buy-side participants to meet new risk compliance requirements without impeding trade latency. Building upon its risk control and high-speed execution competency across asset classes and exchanges, dark pools and sources of liquidity, Mantara’s users can seamlessly trade and manage risk across multiple venues while maintaining superior performance.

“This is an exciting time for us as we experience double-digit growth, rapid adoption and accelerated demand for our ultra-low latency pre-trade risk solutions,” said Michael Chin, president and CEO of Mantara. “We are bolstered by strong market conditions for our products and services and are delighted that our investors continue to see the benefits of Mantara’s vision and demonstrate solid support for our progress.”

About Mantara

Headquartered in Jersey City, NJ, Mantara, Inc. is transforming securities trading worldwide through the development and delivery of integrated, ultra-low latency, high-speed trading and analytics solutions. With its next-generation expressWay trading platform, Mantara is delivering innovative solutions to the financial trading community. For more information on Mantara, visit www.mantara.com

Mantara and expressWay are registered trademarks of Mantara, Inc. in the United States.

Media Contact
Kristen Fuller
Mantara, Inc.
Tel: 650.796.4884
kristen@mantara.com

BOSTON, February 15, 2011 – LeveL ATS announced today that Mantara, Inc., a leading provider of advanced technology solutions and ultra-low latency direct market access has connected to LeveL ATS, giving customers another avenue to reach its deep pool of liquidity.

LeveL ATS has continued its growth as a leading independent source of non-displayed liquidity in the marketplace and is excited to be able to offer the Mantara connection to customers. “We feel that Mantara’s low-latency pre-trade risk control and routing solution will be an efficient mechanism for enabling firms to access liquidity” said Steve Miele, Senior Vice President/Head of Sales at LeveL ATS.

Mantara provides ultra-low latency, high-performance trading solutions through its integrated expressWay™ trading platform. The rapidly deployable, end-to-end multi-asset class solution provides buy- and sell-side traders with high-speed market data, smart order routing, pre-trade risk controls, ultra-low latency market connectivity and high-speed trade execution and analytics – at unprecedented speeds.

“As a key enabler of advanced trading applications, providing maximum access to sources of liquidity is vital to our clients’ success,” stated Patrick Egan, head of sales for Mantara. “As the race to liquidity accelerates, we are pleased to provide our clients with access to LeveL ATS’s rich source of liquidity.”

With the simple mission to provide value added solutions to the trading process, LeveL ATS has seen continued growth. The LeveL model lends itself to a variety of trading strategies giving customers the ability to customize their experience while remaining committed to protecting the integrity of each order.

About Mantara

Headquartered in Jersey City, NJ, Mantara, Inc. is transforming securities trading worldwide through the development and delivery of integrated, ultra-low latency trading and pre-trade risk solutions. With its next-generation expressWay trading platform, Mantara is delivering innovative solutions to the financial trading community. For more information on Mantara, visit www.mantara.com

About LeveL

LeveL ATS is a low cost U.S. Equity dark book trading platform that provides for multi-tiered crossing opportunities giving customers an environment where block trades have the opportunity to be seamlessly executed in a fast and efficient manner while minimizing information leakage and market impact. LeveL ATS is driven by low-cost pricing and a low-latency, highly stable platform. For more information visit, www.LeveLATS.com

Media Contacts:
Chiara Sarata | LeveL ATS | P: 617.350.1608 | Chiara.Sarata@LeveLATS.com
Kristen Fuller | Mantara | P: 650.796.4884 | Kristen@mantara.com

Increasingly, US equity trading has become characterized by ultra low-latency direct market access across multiple exchanges. Contributing to a significant majority of the total daily traded volume, high-frequency trading firms have led this evolution rapidly followed by the remaining trading community. The result is a faster and more fragmented market structure clustered around a handful of major exchange facilities.

With this shift, both exchanges and brokers must conform to the new paradigm by applying high-speed pre-trade risk controls and monitoring that function across a mesh of counterparties and facilities. Leveraging its proven low-latency risk solution, Mantara has designed and implemented a framework to address these challenges with near-zero impact on trade latency.

An integral part of Mantara’s ultra-low latency expressWay™ product suite, CHiPS (Comprehensive High-Frequency Patrol System) offers a cutting edge pre-trade risk control gateway and monitoring system for exchanges, brokers, and clients to fulfill their new SEC 15c3-5 obligations. Building upon its risk control competency at individual venues the system now enables real-time distributed risk control that synchronizes trading exposures and provides limits to activity across multiple co-location trading facilities.

“UBS leverages Mantara’s expressWay and CHiPS offerings to provide a solution for sophisticated automated traders at key exchange facilities,” said Charlie Susi, UBS Managing Director and Head of Direct Execution for the Americas. “Clients in this space often trade cross-asset and cross-market strategies, so they need the ability to seamlessly manage risks across all of these environments. This expansion of Mantara’s risk control gateway answers that need.”

The CHiPS pre-trade risk layer is deployed at each co-location facility with a central ‘instance’ of CHiPS that aggregates all trading activity from each deployment. The combined information is then disseminated back to all sites for synchronization of the total trading exposures between sites setting limits for enforcement at each co-location.

Regardless of whether instances are sponsored by exchanges or brokers, or purchased by high-frequency trading firms for use across multiple brokers and exchanges, CHiPS instances work in tandem enabling each participant to see and manage the relevant information. Each trading entity (exchange, broker, buy-side) can see and manage the pertinent information and apply appropriate thresholds and limits to each firm, desk, user, and account — all in real time.

“Effective risk control and oversight is one of the most pressing issues facing those executing high-frequency trading and direct market access strategies,” noted Shawn Sloves, Mantara’s head of product and strategy. “It’s incredibly challenging technologically to deliver at an individual level let alone on a distributed basis, without levying a tremendous tax on latency. We are pleased to be able to provide the market with a solution to meet these complex compliance requirements without impeding trading efficiency.”

About Mantara

Headquartered in Jersey City, NJ, Mantara, Inc. is transforming securities trading worldwide through the development and delivery of integrated, ultra-low latency, high-speed trading and analytics solutions. With its next-generation expressWay trading platform, Mantara is delivering innovative solutions to the financial trading community. For more information on Mantara, visit www.mantara.com

Mantara, expressWay and CHiPS are registered trademarks of Mantara, Inc. in the United States.

Media Contact
Kristen Fuller
Mantara, Inc.
Tel: 650.796.4884
kristen@mantara.com