Oslo Børs, Norway’s national stock exchange, has successfully started using the London Stock Exchange’s TradElect trading engine and Infolect market data system for equities and fixed income securities as part of its strategic partnership with the UK bourse.
However, Oslo Børs may shift to another new platform as a result of the LSE’s plans to move to its new Millennium Exchange trading platform, developed by Sri-Lankan technology firm Millennium IT, before the end of September.
According to Oslo Børs CEO Bente Landsnes, using the same trading technology as the LSE is an important element of the strategic partnership between the two bourses. “Collaborating on technology strengthens our international distribution network and helps to generate even greater interest in the Norwegian market,” said Landsnes in a statement. The firm believes that using the same trading platform as the LSE will make trading in Norway attractive to London-based brokers, as they will be able to use a familiar system.
Oslo Børs spokeswoman Guro Steine told theTRADEnews.com that the exchange would probably migrate to the Millennium platform in the future, but no decision has yet been made on the schedule. However, she added that the shift would be smaller project that the TradElect migration. “A big part of the TradElect migration has been establishing new network lines to London for both Oslo Børs and a lot of our members,” she said. “These lines are in place for the next migration.” Steine added that TradElect’s use of the FIX financial messaging protocol would also facilitate the migration.
The LSE and Oslo Børs first announced their strategic partnership in March 2009. In December 2009, the Norwegian exchange and LSE’s EDX London derivatives trading subsidiary both implemented the SOLA derivatives trading system, provided by Canadian exchange operator TMX Group.
Oslo Börs described the TradElect migration as a long and complex project which required members, information distributors and third-party providers as well as the exchange itself to make significant changes. The migration was put back to 12 April 2010 from 15 February 2010 to give members more time to prepare for the switch.
“As with every major technology project, we ran into both small and large challenges along the way, but the project benefited from constructive dialogue and good collaboration with our customers and other partners, and not least the London Stock Exchange Group.” said Landsnes.
Simultaneously with the TradElect shift, new membership and trading rules have come into force at Oslo Børs which are based on the LSE rules, but with some changes to reflect Norwegian requirements. The new rules replace the joint NOREX rules for Nordic exchanges that the exchange has used since 2002.
According to Oslo Børs, the most important change brought about by the new trading system is the abolition of post-trade anonymity for the OBX category – the 25 most heavily-traded stocks on the exchange. Post trade anonymity was introduced in June 2008.
In addition, the concept of ‘round lots’ and ‘odd lots’ of shares will disappear, rendering the minimum order size on TradElect as one share.