Eze Castle, an order management system (OMS) provider competing against the likes of IRESS and Charles River, has attracted its first clients in Australia.

I&T News can confirm that two Sydney boutiques, Paradice Investment Management and Caledonia Investments, have signed up to the Eze OMS, a global, multi-asset class OMS which connects with about  450 brokerages worldwide through the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol.

Tony Hammond, chief operating officer at Paradice, was unavailable for comment yesterday, but it is understood that Paradice will use the Eze OMS specifically for the manager’s newly launched global small-caps fund, which is run from Denver in the US, and that the IRESS Portfolio System (IPS) will continue to be the execution system used for its domestic funds. Caledonia declined to comment on its use of the OMS.

Eze Castle, part of the BNY ConvergEx Group, established a presence in Australia in late 2009 under country head Chris O’Connor. The OMS provider, which caters to about 400 buy-side desks offshore, competes directly with Charles River and Australian equities mainstay, the IPS, in the boutique market.

Since the vendor’s arrival, the IPS has expedited its use of the FIX protocol to link managers with Asian, North American and European stock exchanges.