'In the last two years, we have seen a surge in interest in the Brazilian markets coming from the global investment community,' says Stephan de Sabrit, managing director at Planner. 'The overwhelming majority of those investors are looking for expertise from a local broker with local knowledge of stock performance and an unbiased view of the market. Through this partnership with Fidessa, we are delighted to bring our full suite of brokerage services to one of the largest global networks of sell-side and buy-side firms.'

Established in 1994, Planner is the largest broker in Brazil by number of branch offices, 24, and among the largest Latin American brokers. Planner launched its business focusing on equity research and service-oriented voice and electronic trade executions across asset classes.

In 2001, the firm expanded its business to include investment banking services as demand for those services increased in Brazil and across Latin America. In mid-2008, Planner rolled out its banking services on a global level as investors demanded more services from local brokers in the Latin American markets.

Martin Hakker, executive vice president marketing at Fidessa, says: 'Our clients are increasingly demanding access to services from Latin American markets as liquidity increases in the markets across the region. Also driving client demand is that investors are able to execute their electronic order flow in Latin American markets as seamlessly as they are able to for the US, European, Canadian and Asian markets on Fidessa's global network. Fidessa has remained committed to providing its network users with the broadest access to brokerage services globally. The addition of Planner to our global network is an important first step in providing our clients with that same access to quality brokerage services across the Latin American markets.'

In the last year Fidessa's global connectivity network has increased the number of connections by 50 per cent while message throughput has grown by over 200 per cent to over 130 million messages a month. 

The Fidessa product suite provides integrated trading, market data and connectivity solutions to over 22,000 users at around 600 clients worldwide, and serves more than 85 per cent of global, tier-one equity brokers.