ICAP plc (LSE:IAP) unit Traiana is seeking to hire 80 new employees a week, after announcing the establishment of a joint venture with foreign exchange settlement services firm CLS Group to provide trade aggregation services to participants in the over the counter foreign exchange market. ICAP acquired Traiana 18 months ago for $247 million.
Traiana wants to augment the staff at its R&D center in Israel, which currently has about 100 employees. It is also setting a new development center in Israel for another company in the ICAP group. The news stands out given the market climate marked by a wave of layoffs and cutbacks caused by the global economic crisis.
Traiana has operations in Israel, the US, and the UK. The company also plans to open a branch in Japan by year-end, and later in another Far Eastern country. At the same time, ICAP is setting up its own R&D center in Israel after conducting a six-month comparative cost study between Israel and other countries.
Triaina CEO Gil Mandelezis said, "The new center, called IBE, is owned by ICAP. It will focus on the development of technology products for the forex market."
Despite the economic crisis, IBE's area of business is flourishing. According to a study by PricewaterhouseCooper, the development of products for the financial industry is the only business that had substantial growth in investment in the first quarter of 2009.
Mandelezis said that this was a great opportunity for the Israeli market. "Israel has only partly exploited this potential. We have a history of companies in this field that have a place of honor, such as MINT, Fundtech Ltd. (Nasdaq: FNDT; TASE: FNDT), Cyota, Actimize, and Traiana, as well as newer companies like SuperDerivatives. They all have global top-tier customers, so there is no reason for the big banks not to open development centers here."
Mandelezis added, "There is the potential of employing 10,000 more engineers in this sector in Israel."
In 2005, Cyota was acquired by RSA Security Inc., which was subsequently acquired by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC); Actimize was acquired by NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE: NICE) in 2007; and MINT Communications Systems was acquired by SunGard Business Integration Inc. in 1999.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 22, 2009
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