ITG launches POSIT in Malaysia

Agency broker ITG has continued to broaden its Asian offerings by opening up its POSIT crossing network for trading of Malaysian equities.

Agency broker ITG has continued to broaden its Asian offerings by opening up its POSIT crossing network for trading of Malaysian equities.

The move helps solidify the broker’s position as a provider of a full range of trading options in Asia, with the Malaysia offering also including the POSIT Marketplace dark aggregation algorithm and the POSIT Alert block crossing platform.

POSIT has seen strong growth in Asia Pacific over the past two and a half years, with the launch of POSIT Alert in the region earlier this year and the inclusion of Indonesian equities in August.

“Institutional demand for quality liquidity in Asia is on the rise, particularly in emerging and growth markets,” said ITG’s Ofir Gefen, head of Asia-Pacific electronic brokerage and analytics. “Effective bid-ask spreads in Malaysia are consistently wide, between 40 and 200 basis points, and finding liquidity in size can be an ongoing challenge. POSIT Marketplace and POSIT Alert offer mid-point crossing and the ability to find block liquidity when trading Malaysian stocks, which can help deliver price improvement and more efficient trading for institutional investors.”

POSIT’s coverage also now includes Japan, Australia, Hong Kong and Indonesia and now Malaysia, as well as 21 EMEA countries, the US and Canada.

The firm said in 2012, POSIT Marketplace has so far delivered average price improvement of 11 basis points on trading in Asia Pacific.

“We are expanding the types of ways the buy-side can access the markets and are the only broker in Asia to be offering a crossing system, dark aggregator and block crossing,” said Gefen.

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