Optiver, a global market maker, just announced that it has entered into an agreement with trading venue Equiduct, offering brokers a simple, one-stop-shop solution to achieve best execution for their European equity and ETF order flow. Under the agreement Optiver commits to provide continuous liquidity in thousands of European stocks and ETFs on Equiduct against the pan-European volume-weighted best bid and offer. Retail and institutional brokers that connect to Equiduct can thus benefit from trading fragmented European equities and a broad range of ETFs on one single venue.
Equiduct is a market segment of Börse Berlin, a regulated market operator under article 44 of MiFID II (article 36 MiFID I). It offers a fully transparent central limit order book in approximately 1,500 European shares and, with the support of Optiver, will soon be able to offer thousands of ETFs.
As well as a central limit order book Equiduct offers two unique liquidity provision schemes, called PartnerEx catering for Retail order flow and SpotVBBO servicing Institutional flow. Those liquidity services enable banks and brokers to trade at Equiduct’s (pan-European) best execution price formation, the volume weighted best bid or offer (VBBO), throughout the trading day with a very competitive fee schedule.
Optiver’s mission is to improve the market and we are committed to that ambition. Together with Equiduct we will be able to offer retail and institutional brokers a simple, one-stop-shop trading solution on a EU regulated market for their European equity and ETF order flow. A solution that fully complies with a brokers’ best execution obligations towards investors”, commented Kjelle Blom, Chief Operating Officer of Optiver. “We believe this regulated market-operated trading model is a compelling alternative for brokers that do not want to route all their order flow to a bank or broker operated Systematic Internaliser, commonly referred to as an SI, who offer only bi-lateral trading and reduced pre- and post-trade transparency”, added Blom.
Adding liquidity from Optiver, an experienced Market Maker based in the heart of Europe, to Equiduct’s best execution liquidity provision schemes, is extremely valuable in helping us achieve our goal of maintaining stable and reliable liquidity levels within our growing cash equity and ETF marketplace. We very much look forward to working with Optiver to expand the tradable stock universe available to Equiduct members in their pursuit of best execution under MiFID II. Equiduct has finetuned its market model over the last 8 years to provide best execution to our retail and institutional brokers, who by connecting to Equiduct, save on the costs associated with connecting to several different European trading venues as well as mitigating the issues faced when targeting fragmented liquidity”, concluded Artur Fischer, Chief Executive Officer of Equiduct.