Australian-grown securities transaction and fund administration software provider GBST Holdings has signed up its first direct US-based client and is looking to significantly grow its international operations.

“I would expect that in the next three to five years, revenue from international operations would exceed that of Australian operations,” chief executive officer GBST Capital Markets, Denis Orrock, said.  

“Certainly we’ve 140 people employed in the UK currently and a range of customers across Asia, Europe, UK and now North America.”

In the UK, GBST has just enhanced it’s Syn~ 3.0 platform to enable it to calculate and process the new Financial Transaction Taxation (FTT) regulations across Europe on trades.

“You can utilise it pre-trade or post-trade …and it can calculate what underlying security is based in what country when you consider complex derivatives baskets” Orrock said. 

One investment bank has signed up to the new module and GBST is talking to a range of investment banks, institutional broker dealers, asset managers and custodians about the product.

“We believe we are the first to launch a specific product targeted at providing a specialised solution to the complexities that FTT has delivered the market,” he said.

“And the reason we could do so in a relatively short space of time, is because we’re leveraging the underlying capability of our platform.”

Orrock moved to the UK in January and Liz Bevan has just been appointed to the newly created position of CEO North America after the first direct client in that country – Raymond James Equity Capital Markets – was signed up to the GBST Syn platform.

“Raymond James is a great get for us,” Orrock, who hopes to sign on more US-based clients soon, said.