If you can't beat them. Join them

This one makes sense. News came out today that Union Investment, a 260 bn Asset Manager is partnering up with HFT firm Virtu as a trading counterpart and agency broker.

More info can be found here.

It probably will not be the last of these types of partnerships and you can also make some educated guesses what could be possible next steps for trading firms if the leverage they get via their clearing members dries up.