Turquoise, a leading pan-European MTF, today announced that it plans to launch frequent transparent auctions to complement its existing lit and non-displayed trading mechanisms. Turquoise Lit Auctions™ will be a pre-trade transparent, MiFID II compliant, matching mechanism providing indicative price and quantity to the market. The auction mechanism has already obtained regulatory approval for Q4 2017 launch, ahead of MiFID II implementation in January 2018.

Robert Barnes, CEO of Turquoise, said: “Turquoise is proud of its track record of innovating in partnership with our customers. As firms seek MiFID II compliance, Turquoise Lit Auctions™ is another example of an easy to implement solution offering quality execution in a regulated market environment.”

Turquoise Lit Auctions™ will be triggered when Turquoise receives matching orders from its members. Members will then have a 50 millisecond window in which to submit any further orders to the auction before a further 50 millisecond randomised uncrossing period commences. Auction matching will happen within Primary Best Bid Offer (“PBBO”) Reference Price Collar and will support orders pegged to the PBBO midpoint and Limit Orders. Turquoise members will be able to participate in Turquoise Lit Auctions™ by using their existing technical interface to Turquoise and workflow into the new mechanism with Market Identifier Code (“MIC”) of TRQA.

The introduction of Turquoise Lit Auctions™ follows the success of Turquoise Plato Uncross™, the non-displayed service that provides a series of periodic randomised auction-like uncrossings during European trading hours.

About Turquoise
Turquoise is the European multilateral trading facility majority owned by London Stock Exchange Group in partnership with the user community. With a single connection, members can trade shares, depository receipts, ETFs, and European Rights Issues of 19 European countries with an Open Access model that allows members to choose among 3 interoperable CCPs to clear these trades. Members include banks, brokers, specialist trading firms and retail intermediaries.

Turquoise features two electronic orders book services. Turquoise Integrated Lit combines simple limit and iceberg orders with Large In Scale hidden orders. Turquoise Midpoint Dark, renamed Turquoise Plato™, prioritizes orders by size and allows users to configure Minimum Execution Size; it features two distinct mechanisms, each executing at the midpoint of the Primary Market Best Bid and Offer: continuous matching and Turquoise Plato Uncross™, an innovation that provides randomised uncrossings during the trading day, ideal for larger and less time sensitive passive orders. Turquoise Plato Block Discovery™ matches undisclosed Block Indications that execute in Turquoise Plato Uncross™.

Turquoise Plato Dark Lit Sweep™ is an order that interacts firstly with theTurquoise Plato™ order book at the primary midpoint price and then continues to interact with any balance resting in Turquoise® Integrated Lit.

Source: London Stock Exchange