BGC Sells kACE to smartTrade in $119M Deal, Pivots to FMX Exchange

NEW YORK, NY – January 06, 2026 – BGC Group, Inc. has finalized the sale of its kACE Financial subsidiary to smartTrade Technologies SAS in a transaction valued at up to $119 million. The deal marks a significant strategic realignment for BGC, a global marketplace and financial technology firm, as it sharpens its focus on core growth areas, including its ambitious FMX Futures Exchange. For smartTrade, a leader in multi-asset electronic trading solutions, the acquisition represents a major expansion of its capabilities, particularly in the complex and lucrative world of foreign exchange derivatives.

The sale, which closed today, involves an initial payment of $80 million to BGC, with up to an additional $39 million in contingent cash consideration tied to future performance metrics. kACE is a specialized provider of real-time pricing and advanced analytics platforms for FX derivatives, a critical component of modern trading infrastructure. This acquisition signals a broader trend of consolidation within the financial technology sector, as firms race to offer fully integrated, end-to-end solutions to their institutional clients.

A Strategic Divestiture to Sharpen BGC's Focus

The sale of kACE is a calculated move by BGC Group to streamline its diverse portfolio and reallocate capital towards what it views as its most promising ventures. This divestiture is a clear signal of the company's commitment to prioritizing its core marketplace businesses and its significant investment in the FMX Futures Exchange.

Launched in 2024, FMX represents BGC's boldest strategic play yet, an effort to challenge the long-standing dominance of incumbents like CME Group in the U.S. interest rate futures market. Having secured regulatory approval and minority equity investments from ten major global banks that valued the exchange at $667 million, BGC is channeling significant resources into scaling the FMX platform. The exchange, which already trades SOFR futures and plans to launch U.S. Treasury futures, is built upon BGC's powerful Fenics trading technology, a key driver of the company's revenue. Divesting a specialized unit like kACE allows management to concentrate its financial and operational resources on ensuring FMX's success.

This transaction does not exist in a vacuum. It follows a pattern of strategic portfolio management by BGC, including the recent sale of its Capitalab business and acquisitions designed to bolster its core strengths. The 2025 acquisition of OTC Global Holdings, for instance, was aimed at making BGC the world's largest energy and commodities broker. Similarly, the purchase of Macro Hive Limited was intended to integrate AI-driven analytics into its primary brokerage platforms. These moves, coupled with the kACE sale, illustrate a disciplined strategy: shedding non-core assets to fund and fortify high-growth, high-synergy business lines.

Financially, the proceeds from the sale provide BGC with a substantial infusion of capital. While the company noted that any gains from the transaction would be excluded from its "Adjusted Earnings"—a non-GAAP metric it uses to reflect underlying operational performance—the cash is vital. It strengthens the balance sheet and provides dry powder for further investment in technology and strategic initiatives, ultimately aiming to unlock long-term shareholder value beyond the scope of a single quarter's operating results.

smartTrade's Power Play in Multi-Asset Trading

While BGC streamlines, smartTrade Technologies is aggressively expanding. The acquisition of kACE is a cornerstone of its strategy to build a comprehensive, multi-asset trading and payments ecosystem. Backed by prominent private equity firms including TA Associates and HgCapital, smartTrade has been on a clear growth trajectory, using strategic acquisitions to enhance its technological prowess.

This deal mirrors its 2021 acquisition of TickTrade Systems, which was successfully integrated to create its next-generation LiquidityFX platform. By bringing kACE into the fold, smartTrade is making a decisive move to dominate the analytics space for FX and interest rate derivatives. The company views the integration of kACE's sophisticated pricing engines and workflow tools as a transformational step, enabling it to offer a unified platform that spans the full trading lifecycle across a vast array of asset classes.

The strategic fit is clear. smartTrade’s existing platforms excel in liquidity aggregation, smart order routing, and risk management across FX, fixed income, and crypto. However, the deep, specialized analytics required for complex derivatives was a potential gap. kACE fills that void perfectly with its established expertise and client base. The vision is to create a seamless, end-to-end solution where clients can manage everything from market data and curve construction to valuation, distribution, and execution within a single, continuous workflow.

This integration is expected to be delivered through a modern Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. By leveraging cloud infrastructure, smartTrade aims to offer clients faster onboarding, enhanced scalability, and a lower total cost of ownership compared to traditional on-premise solutions. The combination of smartTrade’s low-latency trading infrastructure and kACE’s powerful analytics engine is designed to meet the industry's growing demand for fully integrated platforms that reduce operational risk and empower traders to capitalize on market opportunities more effectively.

Reshaping the FX Derivatives Technology Landscape

The union of smartTrade and kACE is poised to have a ripple effect across the broader market for foreign exchange trading technology. For years, financial institutions have grappled with fragmented systems, relying on a patchwork of different vendors for execution, pricing, and post-trade processing. This creates operational inefficiencies, data silos, and a disjointed view of risk.

This acquisition directly addresses that long-standing industry pain point. The market is showing a clear preference for integrated platforms that provide a single source of truth for pricing, risk, and analytics across both linear products (like spot FX) and complex derivatives. Traders increasingly demand the ability to run real-time "what-if" scenarios across entire portfolios, a task that is cumbersome and error-prone when using multiple, disconnected systems. The combined smartTrade-kACE platform promises to deliver this unified view.

Furthermore, the deal accelerates two key technological trends: the migration to the cloud and the application of artificial intelligence. By planning to offer kACE's powerful tools via a SaaS model, smartTrade is lowering the barrier to entry for sophisticated derivatives analytics and providing a more flexible, scalable infrastructure. The integration also creates a rich, unified data environment ripe for the application of AI and machine learning, which can be used to develop deeper pricing intelligence, predictive analytics, and more advanced risk management models.

Ultimately, this consolidation is about providing traders and institutions with greater control and efficiency. By ensuring that pre-trade analytics, execution, and post-trade monitoring exist in one continuous loop, the combined entity aims to eliminate operational breaks and enhance transparency. For clients, this means a more robust, scalable, and cost-effective solution for navigating the complexities of the global FX derivatives market, setting a new benchmark for what is possible in multi-asset trading technology.