SIX’s BME has launched a new dark pool in a bid to provide an additional source of liquidity for Spanish securities.
Iván Lorenzo
Specifically, SpainAtMid, going live today, enables Spanish market securities to be executed at the midpoint of the bid-ask spread.
Key benefits of the offering according to stakeholders include high liquidity, better execution price and security.
Iván Lorenzo, product manager, equity product at BME, said: “SpainAtMid has been developed to meet the growing demand from our clients for non-displayed execution in Spanish securities. In Switzerland, SwissAtMid had been introduced in 2016 and fundamentally reshaped the trading landscape for Swiss Equities.
“With our extensive experience in this area in the Swiss market, we believe we are well placed to offer this option in Spain.”
SpainAtMid will operate on the same atomic matching cycle as BME’s central order book, available during the continuous trading phase.
Users’ market and limit orders will interact with SpainAtMid either directly or else orders can be flagged to be routed firstly to SpainAtMid – ‘sweep’.
In all cases, orders can have various conditions, including ‘execute or cancel’ or ‘minimum volume’.
Lorenzo added: “By emulating this successful setup on the BME Exchange, SIX enables clients to benefit from the ongoing integration and knowledge exchange between its two home markets, Switzerland and Spain. And we are convinced that concentrating more liquidity on our exchanges is beneficial for all trading participants.”