US dark volumes reached a record high in April as equity market volatility fell, with pools that focus on institutional investors among those gaining, according to agency brokerage Rosenblatt Securities' monthly report.
Regulators are determined to increase transparency in Europe's equity markets, in part by enforcing a tighter trade reporting regime as part of MiFID II. But the increased cost of risk trades for institutions could outweigh the proposal's benefits.
The London Stock Exchange Group has been selected to provide technology and related services to a new cross-market central counterparty mechanism for central and eastern European capital markets.
The Association for Financial Markets in Europe, a sell-side industry body, has warned of risks to European economic growth after the European Parliament voted to implement a financial transaction tax earlier this week.
J.P. Morgan has appointed Ken Kishimoto as managing director and head of Japan equity trading, responsible for the bank's cash equities and equity derivatives trading platforms in the country.
Exchange group NYSE Euronext has claimed that its European equity markets offer superior liquidity over pan-European multilateral trading facilities (MTFs).
SwapClear, the OTC derivatives clearing business of Anglo-French clearing house LCH.Clearnet – an acquisition target of exchange group NYSE Euronext – has signed up US bank Wells Fargo and introduced a new onboarding solution.
CITIC Securities, a major Chinese brokerage house, has announced that it will purchase a 19.9% stake in each of French investment bank Crédit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank's CLSA and CA Cheuvreux broking units for a combined sum of US$374 million.
Rapid growth of the Asia Pacific exchange-traded funds market has given rise to the need for algorithmic trading tools that enable institutional investors to access the ETF market efficiently and enhance the liquidity of these instruments.
While the trend toward dark pool linkages is picking up in Asia, buy-side block-trading venue Liquidnet has thus far not felt the need to jump on the bandwagon given an average execution size of US$1.3 million. However, the firm does not rule out the possibility of linking to other dark pools when the right opportunities arise, said Lee Porter, CEO, Liquidnet Asia.