Turquoise, a broker-backed pan-European multilateral trading facility, expects a drop in order flow when its market-making agreements expire in mid-March, but said this will be alleviated by improvements to its trading service.
“This was a major commitment from nine large trading firms so we are expecting some evidence of change when the period ends. However, the effect will be countered by the increase seen in natural flow on the platform from our growing member network,” Duncan Higgins, head of client relationship management, Turquoise, told theTRADEnews.com. “We’ve introduced enhanced rebates, are continuing to reduce trading latencies and are delivering further innovation in our trading model. These initiatives benefit all firms and incentivise increased trade volumes.”
Since the start of 2009, Turquoise has announced a series of improvements to its platform. In January, the MTF
introduced a new fee structure that incentivises high-volume users. It also expects to implement speed and capacity upgrades by 6 March, and launch a dark pool aggregation service in Q1.
Turquoise’s nine backers – BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale and UBS – committed to making markets on the MTF from its launch until mid-March. All nine banks also had a hand in recapitalising the platform last month, another sign of confidence in and commitment to trading on the platform, according to Higgins.
The Fidessa Fragmentation Index, which tracks where equity trades are executed in Europe, reported that Turquoise had a 5.86% share of trading on 11 major European indices in the week ending 13 February.