Three months after a New York judge ruled on their five-year patent dispute, ITG and Liquidnet have decided to withdraw from further legal action and reach a compromise on the use of the 'blotter scraping' technology deployed in both firms' crossing networks.
Liquidnet, an agency broker and block-trading venue operator, has announced the appointment of Andrew Geissler to its equity capital markets team, to facilitate issuer access to institutional investors.
Liquidnet, the buy-side focused block trading venue, has reported record volumes in Asian equities during January 2011, as alternative sources of liquidity continue to gain traction in the region.
Liquidnet, the non-displayed multilateral trading facility for equity block trades, has stated that a trio of proposals in the MiFID review could significantly raise trading costs for its institutional investor clients.
Asset management giant BlackRock's confirmation of plans to launch a crossing network in 2011 offers new scope for buy-side trading desks to add value to clients, but the initiative is only likely to be replicated by the largest institutions
Institutional investors see little value in additional dark multilateral trading facilities and some fear that their execution choices will be reduced by changes made to brokers' internal crossing engines ahead of MiFID II.