Citigroup has become the latest investment bank to throw its support behind greater transparency of dark pools by reporting historical trading conducted on its internal crossing engine, Citi Match.
Citi claims to have executed US$16 billion (€11.45 billion) worth of trades in Q4 2009 on Citi Match. Citi’s figures follow a similar move by Credit Suisse, which reported last week that €10 billion was traded in its Crossfinder dark pool in Q4 2009.
Both Credit Suisse and Citigroup say their figures are single-counted.
“Citi Match offers our institutional clients the opportunity to interact with the vast and diverse liquidity Citi is able to generate and attract,” said Jack Vensel, managing director and head of electronic trading, EMEA, Citi, in a statement. “Our clients benefit from having the first opportunity to trade against all the flow.”
Japan-based investment bank Nomura has also started to report trading activity for its NX dark pool in conjunction with its reclassification as a multilateral trading facility (MTF) last month. According to data vendor Thomson Reuters, NX traded €303 million in January, although it only started reporting trades from 18 January. Under MiFID, MTFs are required to publish post-trade prices immediately after a trade is completed.
Citi Match is currently classified as an over-the-counter trading venue, while Crossfinder is registered under MiFID as a systematic internaliser, meaning neither is required to provide any historical data. All OTC venues and systematic internalisers currently report post-trade to reporting venues such as BOAT, but it is not possible to separate trades conducted in an automated crossing engine from trades handled manually on OTC desks.
Nonetheless, the figures from Citi and Credit Suisse have started to give market participants a clearer idea of the amount of trading done by brokers internally. Chi-Delta, the dark MTF operated by Chi-X Europe, recorded €8.1 billion in the same quarter, according to Thomson Reuters.