Turquoise has launched Block Discovery, a new service enhancing its existing Midpoint Dark Book, designed to bring together large block orders in a neutral environment.
Developed in close partnership with buy and sell side market participants, it will be supported from launch by seven major brokers including: Barclays, Instinet, ITG, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Neonet and Societe Generale.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Deutsche Bank, UBS and others are expected to join shortly.
Robert Barnes, CEO of Turquoise, said: “Turquoise Block Discovery is an innovation, enhancing the increasingly popular Turquoise Uncross, which has seen volumes grow more than 200 percent over the last year.”
“We’ve worked closely with the whole community, responding concretely to buy side demand for improved block trading functionality, well ahead of [Markets in Financial Infrastructure Directive II] implementation.”
As well as brokers, the buy side has also given its support to Turquoise Block Discovery.
Firms include Allianz Global Investors Europe, AXA Investment Managers, Baring Asset Management, Cedar Rock Capital, Deka Investment Frankfurt, Newton Investment Management, T Rowe Price, Troy Asset Management and Union Investment Frankfurt.
Mark Goodman, head of quantitative electronic services for Europe at Societe Generale, commented: “We are delighted to offer our clients access to Turquoise Block Discovery, particularly as one of the early adopters able to leverage the full Block Indicator functionality.”
“A key concern of our clients has been to source block liquidity, and we believe that as an exchange-owned, neutral platform, Turquoise has a significant chance of delivering this.”
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