Wit Capital's Wit SoundView investment banking operation will today unveil Vostock, an online auction system for secondary and follow-on stock offerings.

Vostock is a joint venture of Wit and ITG Inc., a financial technology company that provides equity trading services.

The system allows for a two-tiered auction of securities split between a large order market (over 1000 shares) and a small order market. The system is designed to encourage real and early bids by giving priority to higher and earlier bids. Investors will be given a minimum and maximum bid range at the start of each auction and access to tools like an order book that can service 40,000 simultaneous bidders, and access to prospectus' and other documents.

Vostock will be open to institutional investors with ITG accounts and individual investors with Wit Capital accounts.

Wit's sales pitch to stock offering companies is that the speed and transparency of the process will better allow issuers to control their offerings, distribute shares broadly, and hopefully improve prices. For investors, particularly individual investors, the value proposition is merely a change to get in early at a reasonable price.

"Vostock creates new opportunities for individuals and institutions to participate side-by-side in the capital formation process, and we believe this unique, first-to-market product will become the standard for follow-on offerings," Ron Readmond, co-CEO of Wit SoundView said in a statement.