Liquidnet, the premier institutional investment community that enables secure and anonymous block trading of equities, announced today that it has expanded its trading operations to include listed securities from Israel. Liquidnet will commence trading in this market on November 1, 2010 making it the first block trading venue to offer direct electronic access into a Middle Eastern market. With the addition of Israel, Liquidnet now offers trading access to 37 equities markets (plus London and Luxembourg GDRs) around the world and provides access to 100% of the MSCI World Index.
“As institutional investors continue to look at newly developed and emerging markets to boost the performance of their investments, they are often restricted by a number of barriers to trading including a lack of liquidity,” said Seth Merrin, founder and CEO of Liquidnet. “By providing access to the broadest global liquidity pool, we are creating unique opportunities for our Members to trade in high growth markets throughout the world so that they can deliver better performance to their investors.”
“The Israeli economy continues to perform well despite the financial crises and the geopolitical events of the last decade. Most recently, the MSCI Barra reclassified Israel as a developed market,” commented John Barker, Head of International for Liquidnet. “Bringing markets like Israel onto our system is essential in helping our Members realize their global investment ideas. By partnering with regional exchanges and local broker dealers we are able to provide our Members with access to more institutional sized liquidity and more direct, electronic access than any other alternative trading venue.”
In 2010, Liquidnet has added a total of seven markets including New Zealand, Mexico and the Eastern European markets of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Slovenia. Israel will add to Liquidnet’s average daily global natural liquidity of US$66 billion and 8.9 billion shares (3Q 2010).
All Israeli executions will be printed to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) via Liquidnet’s partnership with a local broker, who is a member of the TASE. There are 612 equities traded on the TASE with a total domestic market cap of US$205bn^. The TASE market hours are 9:45 to 16:28 Israel Time, Sunday to Thursday. Liquidnet will facilitate trading from Monday to Thursday during Israel’s regular trading hours.
^Central Intelligence Agency (www.cia.gov)
