Instinet is planning to launch a revolutionary pan-European alternative trading system that, if successful, will shake up the European cash equities market far more significantly than any of the merger permutations being fought for by Europe’s and New York’s most powerful incumbents.
The alternative trading venue, or multilateral trading facility (MTF), called Chi-X, is scheduled to begin operating in mid-to-late November and promises to charge users just 10% of what they pay per trade on exchanges such as the London Stock Exchange and the ability to trade about 10 times faster than they are able to on Deutsche Börse, Europe’s fastest exchange, and 29 times faster than on Euronext, Europe’s slowest big exchange.
Chi-X will also have a system capacity far greater than any of the exchanges. Chi-X claims that it will...
