(Previously Ranked 8) When former ITG International CEO Alasdair Haynes took the reins of Chi-X Europe in January, the pan-European trading platform that Instinet had launched in March 2007 was already — in his words — “the largest and most innovative multilateral trading facility in Europe.”
It then proceeded to post growth numbers that seemed to come from a different era: For the January-March quarter, up 123 percent in number of trades (59.1 million), 103 percent in share volume (44.2 billion) and 147 percent in total turnover (€367.5 billion). What’s more, the year-old Chi-Delta nondisplayed, or dark, order book grew at a high-double-digit rate, though on a smaller base (€11.3 billion turnover, up 74 percent).
Commanding well over 20 percent market share of each of the FTSE 100, CAC 40 and DAX 30 trading, Chi-X Europe tops all European alternative trading venues, but Haynes, 50, denies that he’s just out to topple the established giants with low-latency technology and price improvement. “What we would like to see is a much larger European market,” says Haynes, who spent more than a decade with ITG and before that was global head of equity derivatives at HSBC James Capel. Noting that the U.S. economy is roughly the size of Europe’s, but with eight to ten times as much equities trading, he adds, “We think European markets could be two, three or even four times bigger than they are today.”
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