BATS Europe, the pan-European multilateral trading facility (MTF) operated by US exchange group BATS Global Markets, has announced that investment bank Nomura has become its first sponsored access client.
Nomura’s buy-side clients will now have the ability to access BATS Europe directly using the broker’s identification but bypassing its trading systems.
As part of the service, BATS provides its sponsoring participants with risk management features, including the ability to set various constraints on orders for pre-trade protection and to receive real-time information of their clients’ order and trade activity on the MTF.
“Sponsored access is in high demand and we will continue to aggressively connect key market players to BATS Europe’s growing pool of liquidity,” said Paul O’Donnell, chief operating officer of BATS Europe, in a statement.
“This initiative is part of Nomura’s strategy of providing our clients with ultra low-latency access to all major pools of liquidity in a technically intelligent manner,” added Jeff Zorek, global co-head of prime product management at Nomura. “Our long-term ambition as a trading house and an investment bank is to be the number one global liquidity provider by 2011 and we see this as an important milestone towards that goal.”
According to its own figures, BATS Europe accounted for 3.95% of pan-European liquidity on 7 October, including an 8.70% share of FTSE 100 stocks in the UK.