UPDATE 1-Turquoise share trading platform goes live
August 15th, 2008 | by admin |(Updates shares volume, comments)
By Daisy Ku
LONDON, Aug 15 (Reuters) – Investment-bank owned sharetrading platform Turquoise went live on Friday, marking theupstart’s long-delayed opening shot in its battle with incumbentstock exchanges across Europe.
The cash equity trading platform, which aims to offercheaper trading for banks and brokerages than existing bourses,was initially offering a platform for trading in five stockseach in Britain and Germany.
“There are 10 stocks that have gone live, and we haveexecuted or entered orders in all of them,” said BrianSchwieger, head of algorithmic execution at Merrill Lynch, oneof the backers of Turquoise.
“From everything we’ve seen and heard, it’s a successfullaunch,” he added.
The trading platform, a so-called Multilateral TradingFacility (MTF), had initially planned to go live soon afterMiFID — new European Union regulation for financial markets –was introduced, but experienced long delays in choosing theright trading engines and management to run the venture.
In the next three months, the European markets will embracea slew of other new entrants — Nasdaq OMX’s (NDAQ.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) newpan-European platform and Smartpool, a dark pool venture set upby NYSE Euronext (NYX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)(NYX.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), HSBC (HSBA.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)(0005.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and BNPParibas (BNPP.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), in September and BATS Europe in October.
Turquoise Chief Executive Eli Lederman expects such newentrants to take 50 to 60 percent of the cash equity markets ina year’s time.