Credit Suisse and Instinet Europe Offer Clients Bilateral Dark Pool Access

Credit Suisse and Instinet Europe Limited (IEL), the European agency brokerage subsidiary of Instinet Incorporated, an electronic trading and agency-only brokerage service, have executed their first trades on each others' dark pools via their smart order routers and algorithmic trading platforms. Enabling mutual access will provide both firms with access to additional liquidity in an effort to seek out the best possible execution for their clients. Terms of the deal were not announced.

Naseer Al-Khudairi, co-head of cash trading at Credit Suisse said in a press release, "We are delighted to partner with Instinet and become the first brokers in Europe to offer reciprocal access to each others' dark pools through our industry-leading algorithms and smart order routers. Credit Suisse has been at the forefront of driving technological innovation in fragmented European markets and has consistently been the first investment bank to smart order route to new liquidity venues via our Advanced Execution Services (AES) algorithms and Pathfinder smart order router. This partnership further demonstrates our commitment to driving innovation in electronic trading and providing our clients with improved execution performance by accessing all available liquidity sources in an intelligent manner."

Commenting on the agreement, Richard Balarkas, CEO of Instinet Europe Limited said in the release, "Instinet is committed to vigorously pursuing its global policy to link to every viable source of liquidity. Our smart order routing technology is being continually enhanced to effectively interact with new trading venues as they emerge. These pools include not only the new MTFs, but also the growing number of dark pools and we are delighted that Credit Suisse has shown the foresight to provide access. Equally, we are pleased to offer access to BlockMatch for Credit Suisse's smart order router. In the spirit of MiFID, our mutual goal is simply to provide clients with the best possible execution and access to liquidity is key to achieving this end."

With the agreement in place, CrossFinder is now an additional liquidity pool accessible by Instinet Europe's SmartRouter, while BlockMatch has been added to Credit Suisse's smart order routing technology. AES CrossFinder is Credit Suisse's double blind, completely anonymous crossing engine which offers clients the ability to execute large orders with reduced market impact, while BlockMatch is Instinet's European dark pool, offering participants trading large blocks of stock the choice whether to disclose or hide their identity according to their trading strategy.