Monday June 11, 6:35 PM
Instinet sets Canadian stock trading launch for Q4
TORONTO, June 11 (Reuters) - Electronic brokerage Instinet
Inc. will enter an increasingly crowded field with its planned
launch of a Canadian equities trading system in the fourth
quarter.
Instinet, owned by Japan's Nomura Holdings Inc. ,
said the trading system, called ICX, will be available to trade
Toronto Stock Exchange-listed securities between 8:30 a.m. and
5 p.m. Eastern Time.
The Toronto exchange, run by TSX Group , is facing
competition from a variety of electronic networks and
alternative trading systems, or ATSs, including one backed by
seven of its largest customers.
Last week, TSX Group President Richard Nesbitt predicted
that some of the new and proposed ATSs would find a niche and
survive, but some would not.
Instinet Senior Vice-President Tal Cohen said his company's
ICX market model will be fully anonymous and will adhere to
strict price-time priority for orders.
"We think those two things together will level the playing
field and improve price discovery in Canada," Cohen said in an
interview.
Instinet's market data will be available for free, and the
system's technology will evolve as its users increase, he
said.
Rather than draw investors away from the Toronto Stock
Exchange, Cohen said Instinet expects the entire pie to grow
larger as another trading platform draws more global investors
to Canadian equities, including more algorithmic traders.
"We don't really envision this as a zero-sum game, what
we're looking to do is add liquidity, add interest in Canada."
Instinet does want to take a "disproportionate" share of
any increase in trading volume that comes about, he added.
But other groups are poised to jump into the business as
well.
Seven large investment dealers, six of them owned by
Canada's big banks, have said they will develop their own ATS,
called project Alpha, although it is not expected to be running
until next year.
Pure Trading, an ATS developed by privately held Canadian
Trading & Quotation System Inc., plans to launch this summer.
Pure Trading is aiming for a mid-July start, but an exact date
has not been set.
In addition, a number of "dark" pools of liquidity have
emerged in Canada, allowing institutional investors to bypass
exchanges and anonymously execute large trades electronically,
with minimal information leaking out to affect market prices.
These include Perimeter Financial's BlockBook, Liquidnet
Canada, and others.
TSX Group plans to launch its own "dark liquidity" matching
system, called ATX, this summer.
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