Squawker® Successfully Completes Initial Roll-Out - 70+ Sell-Side Firms Across 13 European Countries Signed on Squawker

Squawker®, the world’s first sell-side negotiation platform that is free from algorithms and high-frequency trading, today announced that it has successfully completed its initial Pan-European roll-out.
 
Chris Gregory, CEO and co-founder, Squawker, comments: “We've been blown away by the uptake to Squawker over our launch period.  Today, more than 70 sell-side firms, across 13 European countries are signed on Squawker, ready to negotiate with each other. In addition, we are currently on-boarding another 30 firms, plus 20 more firms have committed to connect to Squawker through November and December. By year end, the Squawker community is set to reach the 100-mark!”
 
Exclusive to the sell-side, the Squawker community is a diverse group, made up of tier-1 investment banks, regional tier-1s, traditional agency brokers, sell-side transition managers, private banks as well as niche sell-side firms across Europe. Within those firms, agency, program, proprietary, delta one and transition desks are all represented on Squawker.
 
Gregory continues: “Whilst Squawker provides the neutral venue for sell-side ‘competitors’ to negotiate against each other those high-touch orders that cannot be matched internally, different participants have different trading strategies and drivers.  By the very nature of the breadth, diversity and plurality of Squawker’s community, with natural flow interacting with risked capital flow, Squawker helps participants find their opposites to negotiate on those orders that are difficult to execute on the order books or in dark pools. Trade interests on Squawker are achieving average acceptance rates of more than 80%.”
 
Chris Brazier, Director, Head of Trading and co-founder, Squawker, comments: “There are around 400 institutional sell-side firms in Europe. Based on the nature and size of the firms that are on Squawker, we are already providing access to c. 20% of Pan-European sell-side liquidity.
 
Numbers-wise, the majority of the Squawker community today is based in London. But the community is also strong across Europe. Take the Nordics for example, where we have more than 50% of Nordic firms live on Squawker. With the additional Nordic firms currently on-boarding, the Squawker community very soon will encompass more than 80% of all Nordic sell-side firms. Our success in Germany to date, has been with the larger German firms, so by November, Squawker will give access to around 50% of sell-side liquidity represented by flow in Germany.”