MiFID II portends expanded use of smart-order routing.

Trading systems in Europe are being upgraded for smart-order routing and algorithmic trading in response to regulatory and market structure changes brought on by the review of Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II).

“Under MiFID II, we expect demand to grow even stronger from brokers and execution service providers for algo trading strategies such as SOR (smart order routing), TWAP (time-weighted average pricing), VWAP (volume-weighted average pricing) and custom algos,” Steffen Gemuenden, CEO of RTS Realtime Systems Group, told Markets Media.

RTS, a provider of trading technology, is shaving off microseconds on network latency, exchange connectivity, routers, switches, hardware, software and distance to matching engines.

“We are offering more sophisticated trading algorithms for brokers and execution service providers including smart order routing across European exchanges, VWAP, TWAP and custom algos,” said Gemuenden.

RTS operates a European and global network to facilitate connectivity to all markets (currently more than 135 venues), and also provides low latency pre-execution risk management, which is increasingly popular in the evolving regulatory environment in Europe, as well as the United States, Gemuenden said.

“We will continue to offer low latency execution capabilities on all European equities markets,” he said. “Customers are increasingly outsourcing the ‘plumbing,’ or connectivity to exchanges and multi-lateral trading facilities (MTFs), to a leading provider such as RTS.”

The RTS data center, which offers hosting and co-location services, will be located at Equinix’s FR2 International Business Exchange (IBX) in Frankfurt, enabling RTS to continue to offer low-latency sensitive clients the fastest access to Eurex and Xetra markets.

“We’ve chosen Equinix in Frankfurt as our main provider in Germany as the firm provides key services for Eurex and Xetra for us and our clients in terms of co-location, low latency and high frequency access to the German exchanges,” said Gemuenden. “We have invested in our facility in Equinix to facilitate the growing demand for co-location space in Germany from our German and international client base.”

He added, “We will continue to position ourselves with our data centers in all key financial markets, including those throughout Europe.  We provide flexible, high-end algorithmic trading tools for our customers to automate their execution processes.”