COLT to provide low latency connectivity to Turquoise

COLT, a leading European provider of business communications, announced it […]

August 18, 2008

COLT, a leading European provider of business communications, announced it has connected to the Turquoise trading platform, so that it can offer its financial services customers low latency connectivity to the new pan-European equities trading venue, which is due for official launch on 15 August. In Belgium, Turquoise would be operational from 5 September.

Low latency is a hot BlogPost within capital markets, where the proliferation of algorithmic trading requires firms to react to market events faster than the competition to increase profitability of trades. COLT, which serves more than 1,000 finance customers across Europe, will connect trading organisations to Turquoise using its award-winning Ethernet service, offering guaranteed security, resilience and ultra low latency.

“Turquoise offers an exciting alternative venue for banks to trade European equities,” said Gary Butters, managing director, Major Enterprise Division, COLT. “COLT has an unprecedented track record in providing connectivity to traditional exchanges and is committed to delivering our customers access to new trading venues as they become available. Low latency is becoming an increasingly important success factor on electronic exchanges as trading strategies become more and more sophisticated – our Ethernet connectivity solution is designed to be the fastest available in the market.”

COLT conducted a poll of its investment banking customers early this year which confirmed the importance of low latency to their electronic trading activities. All of those who took part rated latency as either ‘critical’ or ‘very important’ to successful electronic trading of securities and ninety per cent said they expect to invest in reducing it in 2008.

Turquoise is a pan-European, open equity trading platform on which all participants will have equal access. Either directly or through companies such as COLT, there will be more than sixty participants at launch with many more expected to join up to the platform as the year progresses.

Designed to compete with incumbent exchanges and alternative venues, Turquoise will differentiate on technology, costs and quality of its services. The platform will have a critical mass of liquidity from day one as the nine leading banks backing it are committed to make markets in the 300 leading stocks quoted on the integrated book, with a further 1,200 stocks traded in the dark book.

“As we have said since the beginning, Turquoise is committed to offer vendor network connectivity to our platform,” commented Yann L’Huillier, Chief Technology Officer of Turquoise. “We are very pleased to add COLT to our list of network providers. Our market participants now have a diversified offering from a network access and independent software vendor standpoint.”

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