Jun 11, 2012
Borsa Italiana sets June date for new trading platform
Borsa Italiana will introduce its new MillenniumIT trading
platform on 25 June, bringing the Italian stock market onto the same platform
used by the London Stock Exchange (LSE) since February 2011.
Timed to coincide with the return of the exchange’s matching
engine from London to Milan, the move will also reunite Borsa Italiana’s
equities engine with its IDEM derivatives segment, which had always stayed in
Milan. According to the exchange, this should increase opportunities for cross-market arbitrage, allowing
clients to trade off price differences between cash equities and index derivatives.
The markets that will be moved onto the new MillenniumIT system include Borsa Italiana's main stock market Mercato Azionario, the MTA International segment dedicated to
shares issued by non-Italian issuers listed in other EU markets, the Mercato
degli Investment Vehicles, the AIM and MAC markets for small and medium
enterprises, the ETFPlus market for exchange-traded funds, the SEDEX market
data service, and bond platforms MOT, EuroMOT and ExtraMot.
“We want to
move the matching engine to where the greatest source of liquidity is,”
Gabriele Villa, equity and derivative markets, Borsa Italiana, told
theTRADEnews.com last October. “Most of the liquidity in equities trading on
Borsa Italiana is driven by Italian and co-located international clients, and
we feel this move will significantly improve the service we offer those
clients.”
Borsa
Italiana will hope to avoid the teething troubles experienced by the LSE during
the migration of its UK market last year and multilateral trading facility
Turquoise in 2010. On 5 October, the first day of Turquoise’s operation on
Millennium Exchange, the market open was delayed for an hour and 15 minutes.
This was followed by a further glitch on 2 November, while at the end of
February 2011, a data dissemination problem shut down trading on the LSE’s main
market for four hours.
Elliott Holley
+44 (0)20 7397 3820
elliott.holley@information-partners.com