On November 1st, a new pan-European venture was launched offering a single connection, MiFID-compliant, integrated Europe-wide service for trading services and execution and will help organisations meet the challenge of the EU's vision of an integrated financial services market across Europe.
Equiduct, whose services will include pre- and post-trade transparency, a hybrid book, a quoting facility and a provable best execution capability, will be offered via its own pan-European regulated exchange or as a white label product to systematic internalisers or financial institutions who intend to operate their own trading facilities. Subject to regulatory approval and customer readiness, it will go live in Q2 2007, in time for the implementation of MiFID in November of that year.
"MiFID is intended to promote cost effective pan-European trading, not trading in isolated national exchanges", says Bob Fuller, the CEO of Equiduct. Fuller, who was previously with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and is the former Co-Chair of the MiFID Joint Working Group IT Sub Group, is also quoted as saying that "With the introduction of our Equiduct exchange we can facilitate MiFID compliance by providing a single point of connectivity, and allow organisations to play in the post-MiFID markets without having to make the large investments they would have had to bear individually in order to stay competitive”.
Equiduct's services are based on an upgraded version of the already proven EASDAQ exchange technology platform that was used in production by NASDAQ Deutschland and NASDAQ Europe and subsequently licensed to NASDAQ US. The core IT operations team will be based in London, while its regulatory home will be in Belgium along with its corporate functions and market supervision staff.
From the user community, Richard Balarkas, co-chair of the global steering committee for the FIX Protocol, and managing director, head of equity trading services at Credit Suisse, said: "MiFID is likely to result in liquidity fragmentation as happened in the USA. Therefore, to insulate the market against the cost of multiple links by building a hub facility with access to all the pools is good."
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