COLT, a European provider of business communications, today announced that SWX Swiss Exchange and the company will provide Proximity Services to members of SWX Swiss Exchange and its London based recognised investment exchange SWX Europe. The offering is based on the suite of low latency services launched by COLT last year and will enable trading firms to locate their order management systems as close as possible to the Swiss Exchange’s central matching engine. Members will be able to trade across the Exchange’s product offerings including equities, bonds, derivatives and ETFs with minimal latency delay.

In order to provide the lowest latency service possible, COLT customised its Zurich data centre to house an access point into the SWX Swiss Exchange over a direct fibre connection to the bourse. The service allows financial institutions trading on SWX to house their systems in the same location and cross-connect directly into the switch, offering the fastest possible connection. COLT has already signed up its first customer, which will begin testing alongside the SWX Swiss Exchange’s technology refresh programme in June.

Chris Landis, Head of IT at SWX Swiss Exchange said: “As the trading infrastructure provider of one of the biggest financial centres, SWX Swiss Exchange has a duty to provide fast and accessible services not only to the financial institutions based here in Switzerland but to our members across Europe. With proximity hosting we can offer a level playing field for international firms trading the Swiss markets. Using COLT’s reliable presence and expertise in the financial services sector, we are able to ensure current and potential customers service excellence across our product portfolio.”

Following last year’s announcement with Deutsche Börse, COLT’s agreement with the SWX Swiss Exchange represents the second joint agreement between COLT and a major European exchange. Since the beginning of 2008, COLT has seen an increasing demand for low latency services and products from customers using algorithmic and arbitrage trading techniques. Amidst additional market pressures related to the credit crunch, trading speed has become even more essential to financial organisations with even a millisecond’s delay impacting the profitability of an order.

Terry Quigley, Head of Financial Services at COLT comments, “We are pleased to be able to support the SWX Swiss Exchange’s vision to introduce proximity hosting services to their members. Proximity hosting services are at the cutting edge of the trading environment, allowing our customers to dramatically improve their trading performance by take advantage of market changes ahead of their competitors. Very soon we are going to see a financial sector where proximity hosting becomes the industry benchmark for algorithmic traders.”

As one of the leading financial services infrastructure providers in Europe, the SWX Swiss Exchange is one of the world’s most technologically advanced. The SWX Swiss Exchange is also one of the most open European Exchanges to the international community, as evidenced by its recent announcement of six new non-Swiss companies joining the Swiss Performance Index (SPI). COLT has not only introduced better quality and faster access to the European and International members of the SWX Swiss Exchange but has also helped the SWX Swiss Exchange meet increasing demands for Direct Market Access (DMA).