The market has been designed to simplify and significantly reduce the costs associated with trading, clearing and settlement of European equities. The market will operate with a central counterparty and offer an order book with full anonymity from order entry through to settlement. The London Clearing House will act as central counterparty and Euroclear will offer settlement services.
Initially, Tradepoint will add a further 230 Continental European equities to the 2000 UK stocks available through the order book. It will support trading in all the constituents of the major European indices. Additional stocks will be added at a later date.
The Tradepoint European Equities Market will offer Tradepoint's 100+ members a number of significant benefits. It will: be the only single market trading the constituents of all the leading pan-European indices; offer a single set of market rules covering all European stocks; offer a single, integrated, clearing and settlement platform for all continental blue chip European stocks Commenting on the announcement Richard Kilsby, Chief Executive of Tradepoint, said: "The launch of pan-European equity trading in early July reflects the effort that Tradepoint and its members have put into creating this new market. We are ahead of our competitors and will benefit from first mover advantage together with the support of our Consortium shareholders. The central infrastructure work is well on track and we will reconfirm 10 July after a further Market readiness check at the end of May." Duncan Paterson, Chief Operating Officer of the Tradepoint Consortium, added "We are very encouraged by and supportive of the progress that Tradepoint has made and believe that its pan-European initiative is an important step towards the Consortium's stated objective of using Tradepoint as the mechanism to achieve the principal marketplace for trading the EuroTop 300 by the end of 2001."
