The broker-dealer arm of Getco, the global electronic trading and market-making firm, is opening up its European dark pool to more market participants in what it says is a “unique opportunity”.

In a deal with MarketPrizm, a London-based provider of market data and trading infrastructure services, brokers and buy-side firms will be able to send their orders to Getco’s centrally-cleared broker crossing network for European equities, Getco Execution Services Europe (GES Europe), anywhere in Europe by cross-connecting to PrizmNet, MarketPrizm’s multi-venue low-latency connectivity infrastructure.

“Other European dark pools do offer access but not so pro-actively,” one market source told Markets Media.

Chicago-based Getco launched its European dark pool in June 2010 after becoming increasingly active in European equity and derivatives markets since opening a London office in 2004.

“We are a leading liquidity provider on many public exchanges around the world,” Virginie Saade, head of sales for Getco Execution Services Europe in London, told Markets Media. “GES Europe gives brokers a unique opportunity to interact with our liquidity in a private, or ‘dark’ trading, environment as well.”

GES Europe provides coverage of the most liquid equities in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland and the Nordic countries.

“What we’ve done with GES is we’ve put in place an inter-connect with them and therefore anyone in essence can reach their pool via our already existing European low latency backbone infrastructure—PrizmNet,” Tanuja Randery, chief executive of MarketPrizm, told Markets Media.

“It’s another way of using the MarketPrizm infrastructure to enable access to multiple liquidity pools. We are extraordinarily neutral when it comes to the exchanges or the dark pools and also the asset class, and this is another way of ensuring that our clients can get access and send their orders quickly and with us taking care of all the complex on boarding that our clients have to deal with regularly.”

Saade at Getco added: “MarketPrizm is a leading provider of market data and trading infrastructure services and some of our clients requested connection to GES Europe via their platform.”