Asset Classes

Swiss investment bank UBS has continued its push into emerging markets by launching its Direct Execution electronic trading suite in Israel.

Joe Ratterman, CEO of US equities exchange BATS, has said he would welcome further discussion around the use of controversial ‘flash’ order types, despite the fact that US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved them.

Following a slump in trade volumes and turnover across Europe in the first quarter of this year, both value traded and number of transactions have risen in the second quarter. However, values still fall short of the levels seen in last year’s fourth quarter, when the financial crisis hit.

Swiss bank UBS has appointed six executives to its pan-European equity sales desk, based in London, over the past week.

BATS Global Markets, the operator of US equities exchange BATS, has announced plans to launch a US equity options exchange, and is targeting live trading on the platform in early 2010.

Ned Phillips, CEO of Asian dark pool BlocSec, has acknowledged that plans to bring sell-side liquidity on stream are taking longer than expected, but he denied that the crossing network had stopped taking on new clients.

While the industry has largely applauded last week’s agreement between exchanges, multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) and brokers to harmonise tick sizes across Europe, many acknowledge it is only a first step, and more effort is needed to create true unity.

BNP Paribas has pushed back the Hong Kong launch of its proprietary dark pool, BNP Paribas Internal eXchange (BIX), to Q4 this year because of a longer-than-expected approval process, according to Quentin Limouzi, the bank’s execution product head for Asia and Japan.

Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME), the Spanish stock exchange, has announced that it will transfer the remaining shares traded by open outcry to an electronic system.

Buy-side dark crossing network Liquidnet’s total principal traded in Europe in Q2 2009 was £13.38 billion, a 30% increase over Q1 and a 21% year-on-year rise. The figure equates to an average daily principal traded of £219.3 million.