Private trading operator Liquidnet, owned by the world’s largest interdealer broker, said it has expanded its continental European coverage by installing specialists in equities and fixed income in Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt and Copenhagen.
The strategic move aims to support Liquidnet’s steady growth in Europe through offering a range of execution services including client coverage, sales and trading.
Explaining the rationale behind this expansion, Liquidnet said having local teams in key European hubs help their Equity business offer more tailored client services in the region. It also gives them a way to spread out their workloads across geographies, and then within that, clients can choose different availability zones.
Enhancing their footprint in continental Europe also helps Liquidnet grow this community, deepen the liquidity proposition, which currently handles $74 billion of global average daily liquidity across 46 equity markets.
Last year, Liquidnet activated and started onboarding trading clients to its recently established Dublin-based multilateral trading facility (MTF). The company began preparations to open an EEA-based presence as a post-Brexit base of operations in early 2017. The Dublin MTF, which acts as an agency broker, also received Central Bank of Ireland authorisation as an investment firm under the MiFID II.
John Ruskin, CEO of the Agency Execution division of TP ICAP Group said: “Leveraging the TP ICAP footprint means we have an amazing opportunity to enhance the Liquidnet offering in a very efficient and effective way. One of the reasons Liquidnet’s model works so well is because we are focused on co-creating and delivering solutions that address the challenges our Members face. To do that, we need to be where they are and that is exactly what we are doing.”
Earlier this year, TP ICAP completed its acquisition of Liquidnet in a deal that aimed to boost its electronic trading capabilities. TP ICAP confirmed its intentions to buy the institutional trading network and dark pool operator for $700 million in 2020.
Liquidnet, which was reportedly seeking a $1 billion valuation, was founded by Seth Merrin in 1999. The New York company is known for operating dark pools that allow institutional investors to trade stocks anonymously.
The Liquidnet sale comes as the fixed income market is undergoing dramatic changes, as the applicability of electronic trading across the sector has been much slower than the equity and forex markets. In the best case scenario, it is still largely limited to the most liquid parts of the market.
