BATS offers new functionality following data centre switch

Pan-European multilateral trading facility BATS Europe will offer its members a faster, more cost-effective method of order entry following the successful migration of its trading infrastructure to a facility owned by data centre operator Equinix.
By None

Pan-European multilateral trading facility (MTF) BATS Europe will offer its members a faster, more cost-effective method of order entry following the successful migration of its trading infrastructure to a facility owned by data centre operator Equinix.

The MTF completed the migration of its trading system to Equnix’s London LD4 International Business Exchange centre on 28 October. The move was in part due to the planned takeover of rival pan-European MTF Chi-X Europe by BATS Europe’s parent company BATS Global Markets. Chi-X Europe is already located in the Equinix facility.

Following the provisional clearance of the deal by the UK’s Competition Commission last month, it is expected that two MTFs, which will maintain separate order books, will begin a operational integration early next year once final clearance of the takeover is confirmed on 2 December. Equinix claims that more than 20% of European equities trading now takes place from its LD4 facility.

From 4 November, BATS Europe members can transmit orders to its platform via binary order entry, which allows them to reduce the amount of information included. Trading participants will be able to send smaller messages to BATS compared to a standard FIX message, which can help to reduce telecommunications costs and latency. Binary order entry has been available on BATS’ US exchanges for a few months.

“We are very pleased that the data centre migration was quite seamless and many customers are taking advantage of the LD4 campus’s significant scale to optimise their infrastructure,” said Mark Hemsley, CEO of BATS Europe. “With the migration now complete, we aim to provide premier one-stop access to liquidity with the highest levels of resilience and the lowest possible latency through continuous technological upgrades and new offerings such as binary order entry.”

BATS Europe also announced its trading statistics for October, reporting an overall European market share of 5.1%. This included an 8.4% share of FTSE 100 stocks and a 5.3% share of French blue chips in October. Average daily value traded was €1.85 billion in the MTF’s lit book and €141.6 million for the firm’s dark pool.

BATS’ two US stock exchanges traded 12.1% of overall equity trading, the second highest in its history after the 12.3% share recorded in August 2011.

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