London, New York, Paris, Stockholm, Zurich Connected by Verizon Financial Network

Amid many challenges in today's capital markets - including liquidity fragmentation, globalization, operationalization of electronic trading and increased pressure to innovate faster - trading firms are seeking greater flexibility to enable new strategies. Similarly, exchanges and service providers are looking to deploy and distribute new markets, services and applications seamlessly to a global client base without compromising performance and availability.

Recently, Verizon Enterprise Solutions announced a significant expansion of its Verizon Financial Network (VFN) to enable a wide-range of industry participants including sell-side firms, exchanges and financial technology firms to access new venues, geographies and asset classes via a robust ecosystem in North America and Europe.

Previously, the Verizon Financial Network included data centers operated by Verizon and a select group of cash equity markets. With 15 data centers in its arsenal today, VFN is more open and agnostic and now includes a wider array of market participants representing more than 20 cash equity markets, 15 derivatives and options markets, 15 financial technology companies and 5 FX markets. The VFN connects clients to capital markets in the following cities:

• Chicago
• Copenhagen
• Frankfurt
• Helsinki
• London
• New York/New Jersey
• Paris
• Stockholm
• Zurich

Nils Agren, managing principal at Verizon Enterprise Solutions, commented.

"Many participants - exchanges and firms alike - are still relying on point-to-point solutions that limit their flexibility and agility to address today's volatile market structure and regulatory landscape. As a fully managed solution, we have expanded our Verizon Financial Network to not only data centers owned and operated by Verizon but also to a wider swath of industry data centers in key geographies such as London, Frankfurt, Zurich and Stockholm in addition to those that were available in our initial offering in New York and Chicago with low latency."

"Our expanded VFN footprint now allows our clients, who include the largest full- service global investment banks, to access any available market or application within hours, connect their trading applications that are co-located with various exchanges within a matter of hours while being able to scale usage up or down at any time in a pay as they go model," Agren continued.

For more information on the Verizon Financial Network click here.