The Exchange also announced today the successful implementation in December of enhancements to SETS, the Exchange's electronic trading platform. This £12m investment has trebled the trading capacity of the platform.
To stay ahead of the rapid growth in its trading volumes, SETS was transferred, through a major development operation, to new Compaq Tandem hardware. The upgrade ensures that the Exchange can meet the ever higher standards required by its customers for performance and capacity.
To complement these enhancements, ExtranexTM - the Exchange's new global internet protocol network - is planned for roll out to customers in April 2002. As well as substantially increasing network capacity it will allow for a wide range of quality new products and services for Exchange customers.
The Exchange recorded a series of trading records during 2001, the year in which it became a fully listed company:
- There were 50 million trades carried out on the Exchange's markets in 2001, 22 per cent higher than the 41 million trades in 2000.
- The development of the SETS electronic order book has been central to the growth of trading activity. Order book trades accounted for a record £660 billion worth of trading in 2001, passing the previous record of £531 billion set in 2000 by 24 per cent.
- The number of SETS trades was a record 15.9 million in 2001, outstripping the previous record of 8.6 million trades set in 2000 by 85 per cent.
David Lester, Chief Information Officer, commented: "Electronic trading on our markets continued to grow at a phenomenal rate this year - our customers clearly value our electronic order book, SETS. Our commitment to IT infrastructure investment underpins SETS' success and will enable the Exchange to bring quality new products and services to market, a number of which are already planned for 2002."
Explaining the trend of increasing trading activity, Chris Broad, Head of Broker Services, added: "SETS is a reliable, flexible and scalable trading system that can handle these massive volumes from increasingly sophisticated traders. Its attractiveness has been a crucial factor in driving this year's increased market volumes. Other factors that have contributed include the increasing popularity of hedging and the benefits of the central counterparty that we introduced in February."
The Exchange's trading performance was also boosted in 2001 by a range of new products, including the International Order Book (IOB) and International Retail Service (IRS). The IOB introduced order driven trading for 84 of the more liquid emerging market stocks. The IRS gives retail investors access to 243 international blue chip stocks, quoted in sterling.
