[By NBC-1TV E. H Kim]China Merchants Securities (HK) Co, Ltd. (“CMS”), a wholly owned subsidiary of China Merchants Securities Co., Ltd (“China Merchants Securities”), has implemented NASDAQ OMX's SMARTS Broker solution for surveillance and compliance monitoring of its equities trading activity.

CMS‘ compliance team will use the SMARTS Broker solution to enhance surveillance capabilities in monitoring both client and employee trading for abuse across disparate trading systems. Easy to deploy as a hosted solution, SMARTS Broker helps satisfy CMS’ need for more robust surveillance capabilities. CMS will utilize the automated trade monitoring solution to facilitate quick identification of suspicious trading behavior and intuitive detection of potential market manipulation. SMARTS Broker will provide CMS compliance professionals with actionable insight and sophisticated alerts for insider trading, market manipulation, and violations of order handling rules, watch lists and restricted lists.

The partnership between CMS and NASDAQ OMX provides an opportunity to expand the highly scalable SMARTS Broker surveillance and compliance monitoring technology to other areas of operation across mainland China. NASDAQ OMX SMARTS surveillance and compliance monitoring technology fosters a community of transparency as it is also used by China's HKEx Exchange and the regulator SFC.

Benny Mau, spokesman of CMS, said, “We searched for a solution that could better manage our surveillance responsibilities and keep pace with the existing and future regulatory demands.”

Mau added, “SMARTS Broker meets these requirements with sophisticated capabilities that put our surveillance program on par with global investment banks, exchanges and regulators.”

Paul McKeown, Vice President of Market Technology at NASDAQ OMX, said, “‘CMS’ business in the Asia Pacific region will be well served by their decision to enhance market surveillance capabilities using SMARTS Broker, a solution with enough flexibility and scalability to add new asset classes and connect to new marketplaces as their business evolves.”

He added, “Hong Kong is a great example of where NASDAQ OMX SMARTS is used by broker-dealers, exchanges and the regulator. As a technology provider, we combine NASDAQ OMX market technology and SMARTS to create compliance and surveillance ecosystems in financial services communities across the globe.”