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Aquis Exchange, the pan-European equities trading exchange*, today successfully completed its first day of live operations, executing trades in all three of the markets available at launch.
Aquis Exchange, which has introduced subscription pricing to European equities trading, saw several Members participate on launch day and trades were executed in a range of blue chip stocks from the UK, France and the Netherlands.
Commenting on the occasion, Aquis Exchange CEO, Alasdair Haynes, said:
“It has taken us 13 months from announcing the concept of Aquis Exchange to going live. We are very pleased to have built a highly performant platform, gained regulatory approval and now actually launched in this relatively short period of time. Crucially, we have attracted support from a wide range of market participants and have a very strong Member pipeline. The challenge for us now is to work on building up liquidity so we can bring the much needed competition and growth to the European equities space.”
About Aquis Exchange
*Aquis Exchange was established in October 2012 and operates a pan-European equities trading exchange. It is authorised and regulated as a multilateral trading facility (MTF) by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. Aquis Exchange is set to revolutionise the European trading landscape by its introduction of subscription pricing and innovative order types. Currently, over 90% of European equity trading in each individual country takes place on two exchanges. The aim of Aquis Exchange is to bring fresh competition into the marketplace in order to lower the trading costs maintained by the existing duopoly.
Aquis Exchange’s subscription pricing works on a similar model to that of the telecoms industry and is designed to encourage participation from all categories of professional trading firm. Users are charged according to the message traffic they generate, rather than a percentage of the value of each stock that they trade. There are different pricing bands to accommodate varying degrees of activity. There is a very low usage band for small firms, which are traditionally disadvantaged by the pricing structure of the incumbent exchanges. At the other end of the pricing structure, is the top category where usage is unlimited (subject to a “fair usage” policy).
