Exchange group NYSE Euronext’s two European multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) achieved new trading records during March.
SmartPool, the group’s dark pool, created in partnership with investment banks HSBC, J.P. Morgan and BNP Paribas, matched €1 billion worth of securities in Q1 2010, a 106% increase over Q4, according to the platform’s own figures. Almost half of the matched volume (€427 million) was traded in March.
The dark pool also reported one-day market share highs of 8.4% in the MSCI EMU Large Cap Index and 7.6% of the Dow Jones STOXX 600, both on 15 March, and performed well in Nordic stocks, particularly Norwegian OBX stocks, of which it recorded a 12.1% market share in March, according to figures from data vendor Thomson Reuters, quoted by SmartPool.
“I am very pleased with our growth over the period and with another strong month of trading on SmartPool” said Lee Hodgkinson, CEO at SmartPool. “Increasing numbers of European brokerages are lining up to adopt our offering, as the benefits of our community-based value proposition are accepted as a major factor in differentiating us from our rivals.”
Dark MTFs traded a total of €14.51 billion in March, according to Thomson Reuters, the highest since MiFID came into force in November 2007.
Meanwhile, NYSE Arca Europe, NYSE Euronext’s displayed MTF, reported a strong end to last month in UK stocks, reaching an average of 1.10% and 1.02% in traded value in FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 shares in the last week of March.
“The diversity of our market participants combined with the consistently ultra low latency of our Universal Trading Platform have allowed our volume and market share to reach new record levels,” said Virginie Saade, head of NYSE Arca Europe.
NYSE Arca Europe has struggled to gain significant market share since its launch in March 2009. According to Thomson Reuters, it picked up 0.4% of total European equity trading in March 2010. The platform offers trading in 818 equities across 11 European countries, excluding those already covered by the national exchanges operated by NYSE Euronext in Portugal, the Netherlands, France and Belgium.