May 29, 2012
BATS Chi-X Europe aims to establish data pricing standard
BATS Chi-X Europe
intends to set a new benchmark for market data pricing in Europe, after
unveiling plans to become the first multilateral trading facility to charge for
its data.
From 1 October 2012,
members that receive pan-European data directly from BATS Chi-X Europe, will be
charged between £50 and £4,000 for level one data and between £125 and £8,000
for level two data, depending on the number of internal end-users. Each user
that receives the firm’s data from vendor terminals such as those provided by
Thomson Reuters or Bloomberg will be charged £20 for level one data and £45 for
level two data.
Trading participants
receiving the data directly from BATS Chi-X Europe via vendor terminals will
only be charged once.
Non-display data fees,
i.e. market data used to underpin automated trading tools such as algorithms,
for all markets will be charged at £1,500 (or £500 per market), while annual
distribution licence fees will be levied at £15,000 for real-time level one
data and £30,000 for real-time level one and level two data.
The cost of market data
is seen as a major obstacle to the creation of a post-trade consolidated tape.
“Our customers
definitely view market data costs as too expensive. We have set out an
aggressive strategy to establish a benchmark for market data charges in Europe
and hope that our tariffs will help to stimulate debate in this area,” Mark
Hemsley, CEO of BATS Chi-X Europe, told theTRADEnews.com.
BATS has said its market
data charges are a tenth of the aggregated fees charged by all the major
domestic markets it covers.
“It is now up to the
industry to push the debate further with what we think is a good quality
reference point,” said Hemsley. “Given our market share and the investment that
we have put into the company, we and the majority of our clients think that its
fair we charge for data.”
Despite facing the
prospect of paying for yet more data, market participants are hopeful that the
MTF’s tariff will have a meaningful impact on exchange data fees.
“BATS Chi-X Europe’s
data fees were inevitable, but they are not unreasonable,” said Kee-Meng Tan,
managing director and head of agency broker Knight Capital’s trading group in
Europe. “We mainly hope it will shine a light on the disparities between
exchanges and alternative venues when it comes to data fees. Exchanges continue
to raise charges for their data, despite the declining share of continuous
trading they account for. This is enabled by the fact that they continue
to monopolise opening and closing auctions facilitated by their ownership of
index licenses.”
Trade body the
Federation of European Securities Exchanges has attempted to facilitate the
creation of a consolidated tape with a series of commitments from its national
exchange members to improve European market data. This included making data
free to the public and end-users after 15 minutes, unbundling pre- and
post-trade data to enable easier consolidation and harmonisation of the tags
used by exchanges to identify trade tyes.
BATS Chi-X Europe, which
operates two displayed and two dark order books, accounted for 23.6%
pan-European market share in April according to data from Thomson Reuters
Equity Market Share Reporter. The second biggest European market was Deutsche
Börse, which had a market share of 13.2%, followed by the London Stock Exchange
with 11.8%.
In its October draft of
MiFID II, the European Commission favoured a commercial approach to the
creation of a consolidated tape, whereby providers develop offerings inline
with pre-defined and supervised standards. Consolidators would be required to
aggregate data from newly-created entities known as approved publication
arrangements that will have responsibility for ensuring data is of a sufficient
standard.
Anish Puaar
+44 (0)20 7397 3817
anish.puaar@thetrade.ltd.uk