Clear Street, a New York-based independent prime broker, announced that it intends to enter the futures clearing market with the acquisition of React Consulting Services, LLC and its proprietary, cloud-native futures clearing platform, BASIS.
BASIS will be integrated “into Clear Street’s existing cloud-native clearing, settlement, execution, and custody platform.”
Clear Street’s prime brokerage platform currently “processes more than 2.5% of the gross notional U.S. equities volume.”
Sachin Kumar, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, said:
“Integrating BASIS will give our customers seamless access to futures alongside our equity, options, and fixed income offering in one platform. This acquisition accelerates our product development timeline and brings us closer to a single platform for every asset class, in every country, and in any currency.”
Clear Street will welcome 10 new employees from React, “including co-founders Pat Mayo and Dave Evans, who will both join Clear Street as Managing Director, Clear Street Technology.”
The 10 team members “bring decades of experience in futures and will report directly to Kumar.”
Mayo added:
“The React team shares Clear Street’s vision for a unified prime brokerage platform and believes deeply in the Company’s mission to build modern financial infrastructure for today’s institutions.”
Upon the integration of BASIS, Clear Street will “offer clients everything they need to clear, custody, and finance U.S. equities, options, fixed income, and futures.”
Full integration of BASIS will “be phased, as the company plans to connect the platform to futures exchanges starting in early 2024.”
Clear Street’s expansion into futures clearing is subject to regulatory approval.
Evans added:
“We are thrilled to join Clear Street and accelerate the company’s launch into futures on the firm’s proprietary, cloud-native platform.”
Clear Street recently announced “the completion of the second tranche of its $435 million Series B capital raise, which values the company at $2.0 billion.”
The expansion into futures and fixed income supports Clear Street’s plans “to expand its reach across new markets and asset classes, accelerate future product offerings, increase availability to all market participants, and offer solutions for clients looking to migrate to a single-source platform.”
As noted in the update, Clear Street is “building financial infrastructure for today’s institutions.”
Founded in 2018, Clear Street is “an independent, non-bank prime broker replacing the legacy infrastructure used across capital markets.”
The firm started from scratch by “building a completely cloud-native clearing and custody system designed for today’s complex, global market.”
Clear Street’s proprietary prime brokerage platform “adds significant efficiency to the market, while focusing on minimizing risk and cost for clients.”
The firm’s goal is to “create a single source-of-truth platform for every asset class, in every country, and in any currency.”