Pan-European trading venue Chi-X Europe will launch its sponsored access service in January 2009.
Sell-side sponsoring participants and sponsored clients from the buy-side can now access the Chi-X test environment to start functional testing. The scheduled go-live date is 5 January 2009.
The multilateral trading facility received approval from the UK’s Financial Services Authority for the service on 7 October. Sponsored access allows clients of Chi-X’s trading participants to connect directly to the platform’s core matching engine, either via proximity hosting in Chi-X Europe’s data centres or through remote access. Trading using sponsored access is still conducted in the name of the member broker. It is currently the only platform in the UK to offer this service.