GL Trade Connects to Instinet's Chi-X for Pan-European Equity Trading

Ivy Schmerken, Wall Street & Technology

GL Trade, the Paris-based supplier of front-to back-office trading systems, is offering connectivity to Instinet's Chi-X, one of the first Pan-European alternative trading systems (ATSs) to arise in response to the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), which goes into effect in November of 2007. Under MiFID, an ATS like Chi-X will be known as a multilateral trading facility or MTF.According to the release, institutional investors are able to trade Pan-European equities and achieve "ultra-low execution, clearing and settlement costs," through Chi-X's model. "Both internal and external benchmark tests showed the Chi-X operating model to be more than 10 times faster and significantly less expensive than Europe's traditional equity exchanges," stated the release.

According to Peter Randall, director of Instinct Chi-X Limited, who is quoted in the release, "Chi-X is poised to radically change the race of European equity trading offering latency and execution costs at less than one-tenth of the existing venues."

GL Trade will offer access to Chi-X both as a direct enterprise solution as well as a full ASP service. ASP market access for Chi-X will be provided through the GL NET - the international market data and order routing network, owned and operated by GL Trade.

"Chi-X expands the choice of trading venues, thus fostering the competition encouraged by MiFID," commented Philippe Carre, GL Trade's global head of connectivity. Clients that use "GL Trade's solutions for market data aggregation and smart-order routing will benefit from the new playing field created by markets like Chi-X," Carre added in the release. Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio