Global agency broker Neonet has unveiled its new consolidated European order book offering that brings together Europe’s traditional exchanges with the upcoming alternative trading venues such as Turquoise, NASDAQ-OMX Europe, BATS and Burgundy into one transparent display, and directing orders to the best price – regardless of the underlying marketplaces.

READ THE REST

PLUS Markets Group, a UK Recognised Investment Exchange (RIE), claims that the old London Stock Exchange’s monopoly is “not safe at any level” with Instinet Chi-X and shortly Turquoise operating at the large cap end of the spectrum together with PLUS grabbing increasing market share in small and mid cap securities.

READ THE REST

Following the news last week that 11 firms have thus far signed up, SWX Europe has indicated that its new dark pool launched in partnership with Nyfix, SWX Swiss Block, will go live today.

READ THE REST

PLUS Markets Group, the London-based exchange offering trading services in some 7500 UK and European equity securities, has announced a non-binding agreement with Bayerische Börse AG, the Munich Stock Exchange operator, to jointly develop a new pan-European market for small and mid cap companies and a route to London’s deep capital market.

READ THE REST

Despite the significant increase in competition this year, it seems that the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is standing its ground in terms of trade volume. The exchange’s trading figures for June indicate an increase in the average daily number of trades of 33% on its UK equity order book.

READ THE REST

It seems times are hard for some established exchanges with news that NYSE Euronext is cutting fees and headcount and the London Stock Exchange’s (LSE) recent admission that its three year run of sharply rising trade has come to an end.

READ THE REST

The Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) is set to use Neonet XG Market Gateway as an access solution (Independent Software Vendor) to communicate with its members. By using Neonet XG Market Gateway as an access solution, the WSE allows its members to trade on the exchange using their own membership through Neonet XG’s technical infrastructure, without necessarily using Neonet’s brokerage services. The exchange has also recently signed an agreement with GL Trade to enable GL Trade’s clients to trade on the WSE via the GL Connect ASP service.

Nasdaq OMX joined the swelling ranks of would-be providers of pan-European execution venues this month with news that it plans to launch in September a platform that will connect liquidity pools and offer pan-European routing for some 300 of the most liquid equities across Europe. The operator will leverage the INET technology platform that has helped make Nasdaq the largest US electronic stock market, bespoked to the nuances of the European marketplace and operated by a joint US/Swedish IT team.

READ THE REST

Traditional exchanges have been getting votes of confidence from a number of sources lately. At the TradeTech spring MiFID conference, held in London this month, 79 per cent of the delegates surveyed onsite said they felt traditional exchanges were the ones “winning trading floor supremacy” and 67 per cent said they have not changed their trading systems to “benefit from new venues”. During the show one of the speakers cited research showing that new execution venues are only capturing about three per cent of market volume – proving that firms aren’t routing to the new venues yet. The show’s organiser says there were 160 attendees in all, of which about half where from buy side firms.

READ THE REST

Plus Markets says trading activity on its independent UK exchange leapt 220 per cent in November (from October) to 206,442 bargains – equivalent to around £1.6 billion. Officials at the exchange said this dramatic expansion in liquidity followed the successful launch of its new OMX trading platform and the “significant expansion of its market offering under MiFID”. Plus says it has continued to make “dramatic inroads” into the London share trading business during the first few weeks of January 2008. Amid worldwide volatility, with the FTSE 100 witnessing a 323 point (5.3 per cent) fall on Monday 21 January, Plus reported a record day, with 28,374 trades executed on its OMX trading platform - around 10 times the average number of daily trades that used to take place on Plus prior to the introduction of the new platform.

The Irish Stock Exchange has unveiled a new pricing structure for share trading in readiness for new competition under MiFID. The new pricing structure sees the exchange charge a flat fee of 5c for reporting over-the-counter (OTC), or off-exchange, transactions in over 7000 Irish and other European stocks. Market observers say the competitive pricing could see Dublin become a centre for the disclosure of OTC stock trades in Europe. The stock exchange has also cut its annual membership fees and will no longer charge fees for new equity trading member firms, it said. Recently, the exchange cut its pricing range for orders executed on the ISE to 25c to €1.50 from €2.40 to €3.50.

Plans are afoot to launch a similar attack on futures exchange territory to Project Turquoise in the equities markets via an initiative code-named Project Rainbow which apparently has the backing of major players in the derivatives market including Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, UBS and Citadel. The new iniative is reportedly targeting block trading, and follows swiftly on from eSpeed’s December announcement of a new exchange to take on the CME, with founding firms including Bank of America, Barclays Capital, Citadel, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities, Getco, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, PEAK6 and Royal Bank of Scotland.

While MiFID has made it easier for new market entrants to obtain licences to operate through the creation of multilateral trading facility (MTF) status, and implementing the associated requirements of MiFID has encouraged larger broker/dealers to review their business models, these developments by themselves will not “steal liquidity” from existing providers, Lee Hodgkinson, CEO of SWX’s virt-x, has said.

READ THE REST

virt-x, part of the SWX Group, and electronic trading solutions provider Nyfix, are positioning their agreement to jointly deliver a non-displayed block trading service for Swiss blue chips in the SMI index as not just an important milestone for both parties but an “entrepreneurial launch pad” for bigger things to come.

READ THE REST

To the dismay of some industry observers, MiFID-related predictions of doom and gloom are on hold as exchanges across Europe reported bumper volumes in November.

READ THE REST

As “M-Day” hurtles towards us with gathering speed, the industry’s readiness for MiFID is “like the curate’s egg: good in parts”. November 1 itself will be a largely uneventful day (especially in those countries in Europe where 1 (and 2) are holidays). But during the weeks and months that follow we’ll see the outbreak of “robot wars”, with the larger investment banks in particular quite literally borrowing tactics from the military to gain the upper hand in the battle for execution dominance, and the prospect of very real casualties among those that fall behind.

READ THE REST

Despite some delays to the planned roll-out of Equiduct’s pan-European trading services, its new majority owner – Börse Berlin – is committed to the Equiduct Market Model, and still plans to launch market data services in the first half of 2008 followed by execution services around mid-year. Equiduct’s plans have been delayed by the process of securing second round funding taking longer than anticipated, and, since the existing members of Börse Berlin must now be accommodated, the Equiduct roll-out is no longer starting from a clean sheet of paper. Migrating these users on to the Equiduct platform – the European Trading System (ETS) – must now be factored in to the implementation plans. However, the key features of the Equiduct business model, including its PartnerEx market maker solution, its Hybrid book and it real-time best bid and offer feed (Equiduct VBBO), remain intact following the acquisition of a majority stake in the business by the Berlin exchange. Now the funding is in place, Equiduct can start forging its relationships with market data vendors and complete work on its platform in preparation for launch.

READ THE REST

The acquisition by the Börse Berlin of a majority stake in the rebranded Easdaq business Equiduct, exclusively reported by MiFID Monitor on September 17, may not be good news for Equiduct CEO Bob Fuller – he vacates his role at the end of October. However, for the Equiduct pan-European trading platform proposition, a parent with long-term commitment and existing liquidity to bring to the party could be exactly the shot in the arm it needs as it takes on the difficult challenge of getting an alternative execution venue off the ground.

READ THE REST

Swedish exchange Nordic Growth Market (NGM) will launch on November 1 a series of services for MiFID. This move is indicative of a ramping up of efforts by second tier “alternative” exchanges in European markets to capitalise on the opportunity presented by MiFID to compete on a level playing field with the main national exchanges. As Roger Peleback, deputy CEO of NGM told MiFID Monitor, NGM is already challenging existing national monopolies in the Nordic region, and sees in MiFID not a threat, as the main exchanges may do, but an opportunity. In the case of NGM, questions about the future of OMX as the Nasdaq/Borse Dubai deal rumbles on are combining with the imminent introduction of MiFID to create an even greater potential opportunity for NGM to exploit, he reckons.

READ THE REST

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is busily positioning itself in the run up to MiFID’s implementation. It has confirmed its MiFID offerings, introduced a new technology platform boosting latency and capacity, and, to top it off, is claiming it will beat Boat on pricing.

READ THE REST