Turquoise, the independent pan-European equity trading platform, is going to launch a pan-European dark pool aggregation service in the first quarter of 2009. The initiative goes in response to significant demand for non-displayed liquidity services amongst institutional trading firms.
The service will route and distribute orders to connected dark pools to execute trades with minimal market impact and improved prices. Turquoise will have connectivity to a number of large bank-operated dark pools to ensure liquidity and high cross rates from launch.
The Turquoise MTF today offers a dark order type for over 1500 European stocks, and use of this dark pool has grown significantly since the platform launched in September 2008.
The Turquoise dark aggregation service has been developed in consultation with operators of several European dark pools, and will be an effective complement to the Turquoise MTF’s own dark order type.
Many of the most sophisticated trading firms have developed internal dark pools to make their operations more efficient and to improve execution quality, says Eli Lederman, chief executive, Turquoise. Our independent, centralised infrastructure offers a meeting point for otherwise fragmented liquidity and a place where institutional size trades will execute securely.
We are delighted that we were able to develop this concept in consultation with our members and to move quickly to deploy it. The dark pool aggregation service represents a significant addition to Turquoise’s existing business, and we expect that it will attract interest across the European trading community.