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SmartPool, the neutral dark liquidity pool created by NYSE Euronext in partnership with J.P. Morgan, HSBC and BNP Paribas, today announced that 14 leading investment firms have become members of SmartPool.
Credit Suisse, Exane SA, Instinet Europe Limited, Investment Technology Group Limited (ITG), Knight Capital Europe Limited, Neonet, Nomura, Oddo et Cie, RBS / ABN AMRO Bank NV, Sanford C Bernstein Limited and UBS have become the latest clients to join the neutral exchange-led trading platform.
Launched in February 2009, with founder members J.P.Morgan and HSBC, SmartPool operates a dark order book that offers professional intermediaries the ability to execute wholesale transactions efficiently, with minimal market impact at improved execution prices. The platform which is open to all European market participants, is particularly suited to firms specialising in electronic, programme trading and block execution. Trades are cleared via LCH.Clearnet for Euronext listed stocks and EuroCCP for all other European markets traded on SmartPool. Front-end solutions are currently available from Fidessa, SunGard and ULLINK.
Lee Hodgkinson, CEO of SmartPool commented: “Today’s announcement demonstrates that SmartPool is rapidly being acknowledged as a leading dark liquidity pool in Europe. We are delighted that so many prestigious firms have chosen SmartPool, particularly in today’s challenging economic environment. As a result of their participation, activity on the platform in the second quarter of 2009 increased by over 90%.
We look forward to building on the strength of our neutral value proposition in partnership with the major connectivity vendors and our post trade service partners.”
Richard Balarkas, CEO of Instinet Europe Limited stated: "Since SmartPool's launch in February we have been able to achieve close to 5 basis points in price improvement for our clients when trading on SmartPool. We congratulate SmartPool and remain committed to connecting to all the available liquidity pools in Europe so that our clients can continue to benefit from the price improvement available on the new execution venues."
Rob Boardman, Head of Electronic Trading, ITG in Europe added: “As an agency-only brokerage specializing in electronic trading our aim is to offer our users access to as many liquidity venues as possible. Therefore, it is a very natural move for us to become members of SmartPool so that our clients can benefit from additional liquidity.”
Bradley Duke, Managing Director and Head of Electronic Sales for Knight Capital Europe Limited commented: "Central to Knight's algorithmic trading offering is accessing and aggregating actionable liquidity. We are very pleased to have begun trading at SmartPool and look forward to a long and fruitful relationship."
Simon Nathanson, CEO and President of Neonet stated: “Europe’s market structure continues to evolve and dark liquidity is getting more integrated into the trading environment. Neonet solves the complexity of the increasingly fragmented trading by aggregating the dark and lit liquidity. We offer access to over 35 market places and to dark liquidity on six venues and we are very happy to add SmartPool to our liquidity offering. “We do this to honour our commitment to our clients and the market to offer efficient trading that is simple and quick to use”.
Richard Semark, MD Client Trading & Execution, UBS commented: "As part of the UBS liquidity strategy we are delighted to be amongst the first to join NYSE Euronext SmartPool. We see this as a valuable addition to the displayed and non-displayed liquidity pools we access with market leading Algos such as TAP, our liquidity seeking strategy. All UBS client flow will benefit from the addition of SmartPool as a destination within our smart order router."
