Turquoise, the pan-European multilateral trading facility (MTF) owned by the London Stock Exchange (LSE), is to become the first displayed alternative venue to trade stocks listed in Hungary and the Czech Republic.
The new offering, which will allow Turquoise members to trade the constituents of the Hungarian BUX and Czech PX indices – 25 stocks in total – will be made available from 26 February. EuroCCP, the MTF’s incumbent central counterparty, will clear the trades, with Citi’s Global Transaction Services unit acting as the settlement agent.
“We are delighted to be the first pan-European trading platform to launch trading in Hungarian and Czech equities, further extending the choice of securities for our clients,” commented David Lester, who was named as CEO of Turquoise last week. “Through these clearing arrangements, clients will benefit from the same differentiated value and risk-managed clearing and settlement solution offered currently for our existing European markets.”
The LSE completed its purchase of Turquoise last Thursday and has already started work on merging the MTF with Baikal, its nascent dark pool. In the short term, both platforms will operate separately.
Two other European alternative equities trading venues have set their sights on expanding their central and eastern Europe (CEE) covereage in recent months. Buy-side-only crossing network Liquidnet added Polish stocks to its platform on 15 February and started trading Hungarian and Czech equities in 2007. According to Liquidnet’s own figures, it traded US$595 million in Hungarian equities and US$315 million in Czech equities in 2009. Nasdaq OMX Europe, the MTF operated by exchange group Nasdaq OMX, has said it plans to start offering CEE stocks by the end of Q1.
EuroCCP, which now offers clearing for stocks traded in 17 national markets and in nine different currencies, has said clearing for Hungarian and Czech equities will be made available for any other platform it clears for. Currently, EuroCCP also clears for NYSE Arca Europe and dark pools Pipeline and SmartPool.