New York and London-based alternative asset manager GLG Partners has signed up to Calastone to allow clients to transact its mutual fund products over the cross-border transaction network.

GLG said in a statement that its decision to connect to Calastone’s transaction network was part of a quest for increased automation and efficiency, and to enable clients to easily trade its mutual funds. The firm also said it was impressed by Calastone’s efforts to make the movement of funds in the mutual fund market more efficient, and the amount of sign-ups it had secured.

Calastone promotes its transaction network as an opportunity for the whole mutual fund market to become fully electronic and automated throughout the entire trading lifestyle. One of its primary advantages, according to the firm, is that users can send and receive instructions using whichever messaging protocol they prefer as the network translates all messages to Calastone ISO 20022.

The move towards standardised messaging has been gathering pace within the mutual funds industry for some time now and large numbers of fund providers, distributors, wrap platforms, wealth managers, stockbrokers, transfer agents and hedge funds have been connecting to Calastone.