Instinet Pacific, the Asia-ex Japan agency brokerage subsidiary of Instinet, has added Hong Kong equities to CBX ASIA, its off-exchange, displayed liquidity pool.
The expansion is a response to the increased willingness of Asian traders to take advantage of the anonymity and advanced order functionality of crossing networks and alternative liquidity pools, according to Nick McDonald, co-head of Asia-Pacific equities Instinet. “Clients have expressed interest in extending CBX to other Asian markets. Hong Kong is Instinet’s second largest market in Asia, which makes it the most natural choice to introduce CBX after Japan,” he said.
Launched in 2001, under Instinet’s Japanese proprietary trading system licence, CBX ASIA is a real-time, low-latency central limit order book with traditional price/time priority. Unlike Instinet CBX in the US, which is based on the same technology, CBX ASIA is a displayed platform whose market data is available to clients. Fully-hidden orders are prohibited under securities laws in certain Asian jurisdictions.
CBX ASIA is available to both institutions and broker-dealers via Instinet’s Newport 3 EMS and Asia SmartRouter, directly via FIX or through third-party OMS/EMS. Market data is available through ThomsonReuters and ACTIV Financial Systems.
In addition, Instinet operates two dark crossing platforms in Asia, KoreaCross, launched last year, and JapanCrossing, which has been available since 2001.