The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has announced that the migration of its UK cash market to the new Millennium Exchange trading platform will take place on 14 February, following a series of setbacks that delayed the switchover last year.
The exchange says it has since been working closely with clients to ensure that the new platform will be able to handle the expected increase in volume resulting from the improvement in technological performance.
Early testing of the new system will take place on 24 January, with dress rehearsals scheduled for 29 January and 5 February. Connectivity testing will take place on 12 February, before the full migration two days later.
The LSE originally planned to move its UK market to Millennium Exchange, the new platform supplied by Sri Lanka-based MillenniumIT, on 1 November 2010 following the transfer of Turquoise, the exchange group's multilateral trading facility, from its Cinnober-supplied trading platform on 4 October.
However, following customer requests for more testing time, the LSE switch was initially delayed for two weeks.
Furthermore, during its first week of operation on Millennium Exchange, Turquoise suffered from teething problems, including an internal network issue that delayed the opening of trading on 5 October by one hour and 15 minutes.
A further delay for the UK market was encountered on 2 November when customers were disconnected from Turquoise under what were described by the LSE as “suspicious circumstances”. At the time, the LSE said that the migration of its main market would be rescheduled for 2011 because of an agreed ”freeze period' it had in place with members for December, and to allow time for an investigation into the incident.
In a statement, the exchange said its internal investigation into the matter had now come to an end.
“The exchange can also confirm that its internal investigation into last November’s trading disruption on Turquoise has now concluded,” read the statement. “The investigation found the incident was the result of human error and the incident has now been closed.”
According to the LSE's figures from trades conducted on Turquoise during the first two weeks of operation on the new system, the MillenniumIT platform has an average order entry latency of 126 microseconds using a native application programming interface, and 196 microseconds using FIX 5.0.
anish.puaar@thetrade.ltd.uk
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