Pan-European multilateral trading facility Chi-X Europe has reported sustained trading growth on both its lit and dark platforms and has confirmed it has received additional investment from members via its 2009 equity participation scheme.
“Despite reduced overall market volumes in 2009 we have seen an increase in our own pan-European market share throughout the year,” Graham Dick, head of business development, Chi-X Europe, told theTRADEnews.com. “Our shareholders have not only continued to back us but have increased their investment in the company towards the end of the year as part of the ‘jump ball’ capital raising programme.”
The 2009 jump ball scheme, which ran from 1 June to 30 October, was the third such initiative Chi-X has run. The scheme offers members who trade a certain value of stock on Chi-X Europe the opportunity to buy equity in the platform.
Chi-X Europe’s Q4 2009 turnover was €277.44 billion, a 19% rise from Q3’s turnover of €233.86 billion. Share volume also increased to 35 billion in Q4 from 30.2 billion in Q3.
According data vendor Thomson Reuters, Chi-X Europe accounted for 13.7% total pan-European market share in December last year, just 0.1% behind the London Stock Exchange, which took the top spot.
Dick also highlighted the growing significance of products like Chi-Delta, the MTF’s separate dark pool platform and Chi-Vision, a service that sends orders to Chi-Delta first before routing them on to select liquidity partners if a match is not found.
Volumes in Chi-Delta rocketed in Q4. Turnover increased by 258% to €8.4 billion, and share volume increased 293% to 1.4 billion. According to Thomson Reuters, it is currently the largest pan-European dark pool, accounting for 32% of dark liquidity in December.
“While the lit book remains our core product, we continue to expand higher margin products like Chi-Delta and Chi-Vision, which we will roll out in the first half of this year,” said Dick.