Instinet, what an interesting bunch: Instinet is an institutional, agency-only broker that also serves as the independent equity trading arm of its parent, Nomura Group. It executes trades for roughly 1,500 “buyside” clients such as asset management firms, hedge funds, insurance companies, mutual funds and pension funds. Headquartered in New York and with offices in twelve other cities around the world, the company provides sales trading services and trading technologies such as the Newport EMS, algorithms, trade cost analytics, commission management, independent research and dark pools of liquidity.

Nomura Holdings, Inc. is a Japanese financial holding company, and a principal member of the Nomura Group. It, along with its broker-dealer, banking and other financial services subsidiaries, provides investment, financing and related services to individual, institutional and government customers on a global basis with an emphasis on securities businesses.