Nomura to ramp up NX in Hong Kong

Japan-based investment bank Nomura has said it will open up its NX dark pool in Hong Kong to include all of its internal institutional flow from 21 June.
By None

Japan-based investment bank Nomura has said it will open up its NX dark pool in Hong Kong to include all of its internal institutional flow from 21 June.

NX, which received approval by Hong Kong regulator the Securities and Futures Commission at the start of May, has so far been operating with a limited number of clients on board. From Monday however, it will be open to all of Nomura’s institutional order flow for Hong Kong equities.

“After successful testing of live beta over the past few weeks, we are delighted to announce that NX Hong Kong is officially live,” said Robert Laible, head of electronic trading services and program trading sales, Asia-Pacific, Nomura. “We are now opening up the platform to allow all our clients to benefit from our crossing network. Of course, we can accommodate those clients who opt out of trading in NX as well as those that prefer to trade agency only.”

All trades executed in NX will be automatically reported to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx). According to Nomura, trades crossed in NX will be benefit from high levels of anonymity, as orders are not displayed internally and externally, and price improvement, as all orders will be crossed within the bid-ask spread published on the HKEx.

Nomura joins a number of brokers operating crossing services in Hong Kong, including Goldman Sachs’ SIGMA, UBS PIN and Citi Match. Collectively, ATSs account for around 3% of equity trading in Hong Kong.

The full rollout of NX in Hong Kong marks a global drive from Nomura to expand its internal crossing capabilities. NX launched in Japan and the US in Q4 2009 and gained multilateral trading facility status in Europe in January 2010.

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