"The Swiss financial services industry is the driving force behind the virt-x exchange. virt-x has created the basis for a massive increase in efficiency in the international trading and crossborder settlement of blue chips," said Dr Jörg Fischer, Chairman of the Board of SWX Swiss Exchange, at SWX's annual media conference on Friday. virt-x offers Switzerland a gateway to pan-European trading and reinforces the country's position as an international finance centre.
Dr Fischer pointed out that this is not the first successful international venture that SWX Swiss Exchange has been part of, alluding to Eurex, formed in August 1998 out of the merger between Switzerland's Soffex and Germany's futures exchange DTB. 42 Swiss financial institutions enjoy full access (on a par with the rest of Europe) to the global Eurex network of 430 participants. Daniel Gisler - who, together with Jürg Spillmann and Michael Widmer, represents Switzerland on the six-strong Eurex Executive Board - pointed out that Eurex has developed into the world's largest derivatives market over the past three years. Eurex will continue to make a name for itself with innovative products.
Antoinette Hunziker-Ebneter, Head of the SWX Group and virt-x CEO, briefed the conference on initial experiences with virt-x. The technical migration of the SMI liquidity to a UK investment exchange was successfully completed. Competitive 2-way prices were set in global benchmark shares and significant volumes of leading European securities were achieved. Turnovers in technology and telecoms stocks were particularly gratifying.
Dr Heinrich Henckel, CEO of SWX Swiss Exchange, stated that although 70% of SWX's previous turnover has been transferred to virt-x, from a technical standpoint this is still being generated on a Swiss platform. SWX plans to use the additional revenues accruing from virt-x to continue the upgrading of its own systems so that it can trade and process local or small caps (and other segments) with the same functionalities as high-turnover blue chips.
