The LSE Directory / Trading software
Calypso Technology and AxiomSL merged in July 2021 to form Adenza, a capital markets software company that has operated as a brand within Nasdaq, Inc.'s Financial Technology division since Nasdaq completed its acquisition of Adenza on November 1, 2023. Adenza's software spans two product lines inherited from its predecessor companies. The Calypso platform, written in Java, provides front-to-back trading, treasury, risk and collateral management workflows for banks, broker-dealers, asset managers and other market participants, with a "Bank-in-a-Box" offering that bundles the software with a pre-configured Target Operating Model for a given asset class. The AxiomSL platform, built around its ControllerView engine, handles risk data management and regulatory reporting: data lineage, risk aggregation, reconciliation, validation and disclosures. Calypso, founded in 1997, competes most directly with Murex in cross-asset capital markets software, positioning itself as a single platform consolidating trading, risk and post-trade processing that many banks otherwise split across separate front, middle and back office systems. AxiomSL, founded in 1991, built its franchise in regulatory reporting and risk data management, reported to serve roughly 90% of global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) and to process thousands of regulatory reports across dozens of jurisdictions prior to its merger with Calypso. Combining the two under one brand gave Nasdaq a vendor that pairs front-office trading and risk software with back-office regulatory compliance, a pairing that most single competitors in either category do not offer together. Calypso Technology was founded in 1997 by Charles Marston and Kishore Bopardikar; AxiomSL was founded in 1991 by Alex Tsigutkin and Vladimir Etkin. Private equity firms Bridgepoint and Summit Partners acquired Calypso in 2016. Thoma Bravo took a majority stake in AxiomSL in December 2020, then bought Calypso for approximately $3.7 billion in a deal announced March 2021, merging the two companies under the new Adenza name that July. Nasdaq, Inc. agreed on June 12, 2023 to acquire Adenza from Thoma Bravo for $10.5 billion, its largest acquisition to date, structured as roughly $5.75 billion in cash plus about 85.6 million shares of Nasdaq common stock; the deal closed November 1, 2023. At announcement, Nasdaq cited Adenza's approximately $590 million in 2023 estimated revenue, about 80% recurring, 98% gross client retention and an adjusted EBITDA margin near 58%. Adenza was dual headquartered in London and New York with close to 2,000 employees and more than 60,000 users across roughly 18 countries; Didier Bouillard, previously CEO of Calypso from 2018, has led the combined company since the 2021 merger. Since the acquisition closed, Adenza has sat inside Nasdaq's Financial Technology segment alongside Nasdaq Verafin and Nasdaq's surveillance and marketplace technology lines; Nasdaq has described 2025 as the year it completed Adenza's integration into the wider Nasdaq technology portfolio, part of a broader strategy of growing recurring software and data revenue alongside its exchange operations.
