BNY ConvergEx Group, a provider of global agency brokerage and investment technology solutions, has announced that it is linking its VortEx dark liquidity pool (Electronic Trading, May 2007) with Credit Suisse’s Advanced Execution Services (AES) CrossFinder.

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Five months ahead of the planned September launch of its trading platform, Turquoise Trading, the multi-lateral trading facility (MTF) established by nine leading European investment banks, says it’s received commitment from 38 largely sell-side firms to connect up to the hybrid trading model from day one.

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Five months ahead of the planned September launch of its trading platform, Turquoise Trading, the multi-lateral trading facility (MTF) established by nine leading European investment banks, says it’s received commitment from 38 largely sell-side firms to connect up to the hybrid trading model from day one.

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BATS Trading is to use Savvis to support the expansion of its all electronic alternative to Nasdaq and NYSE in to Europe (Electronic Trading, April 2008), pledging that its European ECN platform will be hosted in Savvis’s Docklands data centre when it goes live later this summer.

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Chi-X has marked its first anniversary with volumes of 6,581,183,080 for Q1 2008 up 256 per cent on the previous quarter. During the last 12 months, Chi-X Europe market ratios have steadily climbed achieving a peak market ratio volume of 13.18 per cent of total trading in FTSE100 stocks on 13 March 2008.

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Nyfix has become the latest new entrant in the European dark pool sector with last month’s launch of Euro Millennium, a neutral venue for pan-European listed equities. A year in the making, Euro Millennium has been designed to cater to both buy- and sell-side institutions, and was developed with input from an advisory board comprising institutions from both sides of the fence.
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Instinet has launched KoreaCross, the first securities crossing network for Korean equities and its ninth alternative trading system (ATS) platform globally, in collaboration Samsung Securities.

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BATS Trading, the US-based all-electronic alternative to Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), plans to launch a European version of its ECN platform this year in a bid to take on the region’s domestic stock exchanges. The firm is in the process of forming a European division and establishing a data centre in London.

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GL Trade, a provider of integrated multi-asset solutions for financial institutions, has launched its front office FX trading solution for spot FX. GL Trade now connects to Baxter-FX, FXCM Pro, Hotspot FXi, and FXMarketSpace.

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Credit Suisse is acquiring an undisclosed stake in Axe ECN, the alternative execution venue targeting the Australian marketplace (Asia Markets IT, April 2007). The ECN, which is expected to launch in mid-2008 (Asia Markets IT, June 2007), is being set up by the New Zealand Exchange (NZX) and five other banks to compete with services provided by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). The size and value of the Credit Suisse stake has not been disclosed.

Bats Trading, an electronic alternative to Nasdaq and Nyse, is planning to set up operations in Europe and compete with the region’s domestic stock exchanges, according to press reports.

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Chi-X Canada, the subsidiary of Nomura-owned Instinet and part of its recently announced Chi-X Global initiative, says it has completed migration of all Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) listed securities on to its alternative trading system, and will add smart order routing functionality to the platform in early April.

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As reported in the March issue of Electronic Trading, Chi-X Europe has confirmed it is trading, clearing and settling the top five component stocks within the OMX Stockholm 30 index - including Ericsson ‘B’ and Volvo ‘AB’ - and plans to introduce the remainder of leading names on the index by the end of March.

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Chi-X Europe is on the verge of entering the Nordic markets to offer trading of blue chip equities in the region, including majors like Nokia and Ericsson. This is in line with Chi-X Europe’s stated intent to roll out its services market by market. But as the roll-out of the Chi-X Europe proposition continues apace, questions are surfacing about how many market participants’ smart order routers (SORs) are actually including the venue in their coverage.

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Pure Trading, the Canadian ATS offering a fully electronic continuous auction market, has appointed Transaction Network Services to provide connectivity via its fully managed Secure Trading Extranet. Transaction Network Services is working with Pure Trading to support high capacity, low latency and cost effective connections with new and existing customers. In addition to providing Pure Trading with fast, secure and reliable connectivity, the link to TNS will allow access to TNS’s financial community of interest. TNS’s network incorporates more than 1000 end-points, representing buy and sell side institutions, market data and software vendors, exchanges and alternative trading venues around the world.

Turquoise, the multilateral trading facility (MTF) established by nine European investment banks, has confirmed another IT partner and step towards platform realisation with the announcement that it is to team with AppLabs, the world’s largest independent testing, quality management and certification organisation, to deliver the testing programme designed to “verify and ensure” the MTF’s hybrid trading platform is fit for purpose.

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While likely success can never be accurately predicted or even assured, Turquoise Trading Limited is in with a good shout of becoming a leading MTF in Europe, Harrell Smith, co-head, product strategy group at Portware, has suggested in an impact assessment on the alternative venue that plans to launch an anonymous dark pool integrated with a fully lit order book this September with its dealer-owners.

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The rise and rise of the Instinet Chi-X proposition continues apace as the Nomura subsidiary forms Chi-X Global as a holding company for the operations of its Chi-X platforms in Europe, Canada and Asia-Pacific, and unveils plans to launch Chi-X Australia.

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Regulatory change such as MiFID has given the investment banks a taste for introducing competition and smashing monopolies in the execution space, it seems, as following in the footsteps of Project Turquoise in the European cash equity market space Project Rainbow is seeking to take on Liffe and Eurex in the European derivatives markets. The derivatives side of this story also has a US angle: Rainbow’s US counterpart Four Seasons is seeking to compete with the CME, at a time when the US Department of Justice has called for the separation of the clearing function from the futures exchanges on the grounds that exchanges owning clearers is anti-competitive.

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BIDS Trading has executed more than 60 million shares in one day. Since its launch in the spring of 2007, BIDS Trading has surpassed a total volume of 2.86 billion shares, with average daily volume breaking a new record of over 18.7 million shares in January 2008.