NYSE’s European Dark Pool Signs Penson Worldwide as New Member
NYSE Euronext’s SmartPool unit signed Penson Worldwide Inc., a securities-clearing firm, as its newest member as the companies seek to increase business from medium- sized and small brokers in Europe.
The London-based unit of Penson will offer brokers who want to access SmartPool, a dark pool that doesn’t publicly display prices, the chance to connect, clear and settle, according to Clive Triance, chief executive officer of the unit. The connection will appeal to mid-size and small European brokers who can use Penson’s services, said Lee Hodgkinson, CEO of SmartPool and Head of European Sales & Relationship Management at NYSE Euronext.
SmartPool, now in its second year in business, had 855,770 trades and matched volumes of 7.35 billion euros ($10 billion) in the three months through September 2010. The London-based dark pool, which the world’s largest stock exchange owns with BNP Paribas SA, HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co., began trading European stocks in February 2009.
“When we launched SmartPool, having conversations with firms outside the bulge-bracket banks in continental Europe was quite difficult,” Hodgkinson said in an interview. “Those firms didn’t feel there was sufficient client demand for alternative trading strategies. That’s changed.”
The system offers shares listed on the U.K.’s FTSE All- Share Index, Germany’s DAX Index, the Netherlands’ AEX All-Share Index and France’s CAC AllShares Index. The platform absorbed the Euro Millennium dark pool, moved to a new trading system and has expanded into small- and mid-cap stocks.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nandini Sukumar in London at nsukumar@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Merritt at Dmerritt1@bloomberg.net.
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