Börse Berlin - Equiduct Trading

Equiduct: The Best Execution Solution For Europe

Equiduct – a Regulated Market, operated by Borse Berlin and considered “Pre-trade transparent and MiFID compliant” by ESMA - launched in 2009 following the introduction of MiFID which led to the fragmentation of liquidity across multiple trading venues.

In order to address the challenges faced by brokers of providing best execution in a fragmented market, Equiduct developed PartnerEx, the only trading platform to offer pan-European, on-exchange, order by order Best Execution facilities.  In 2014, Equiduct extended its offer to institutions with the launch of SpotVBBO, a best execution service with significant benefits for proprietary flow.

Equiduct's unique trading model combines a vanilla central limit order book HybridBook with premium Retail (PartnerEx) and Institutional (SpotVBBO) Best Execution services, to deliver an all in one trading solution for retail and institutional investors. Both PartnerEx and SpotVBBO allow members to trade at VWAP prices calculated by Equiduct based on the liquidity in the consolidated European Order Book - the VBBO. To calculate the VBBO, Equiduct collects order book depth from Europe’s major lit venues including Euronext, London, Milan, Xetra, BATS Chi-X Europe, and Turquoise – the ‘reference markets’.

The VBBO is the best volume weighted bid/offer price clients could obtain if their order was optimally routed to multiple venues to interact with the best priced liquidity available at the time the order was submitted. The VBBO is therefore always equal to or better than the average price achievable on any reference market that contributes to the VBBO price formation for any order size.

The model brings together Order Flow Providers (OFPs) and Liquidity Providers (LPs) with all trades executed in a single fill at the VBBO calculated for the precise volume traded. Members can choose whether to trade passively or aggressively. Passive trading is facilitated by members making themselves available for executions at the VBBO, stating the size and side per security. OFPs wishing to trade aggressively at the VBBO can submit orders to trade against the liquidity made available by LPs. Securities that exhibit pre-trade fragmentation across multiple venues are eligible for inclusion in the PartnerEx and SpotVBBO universe, giving Equiduct a tradable universe that represents 97% of the pan-European daily turnover in cash equity markets.

PartnerEx

Equiduct's Premium Best Execution service, PartnerEx, sources fragmented liquidity from across Europe, allowing retail brokers to meet their Best Execution obligations by trading against the pan-European consolidated order book.

Key features include:

• The best executable price backed by Liquidity Providers
• Guaranteed liquidity with pre-agreed maximum order sizes
• The highest likelihood of execution
• Single VWAP fill, regardless of the number of venues and price levels which contributed top price determination
• Proof of best execution
• Reduced post-trade costs as a result of fewer fills
• Pan European stock coverage - all liquid and fragmented equities and ETFs traded across the UK, Italian, German and Euronext markets

SpotVBBO

Using Equiduct's proprietary VBBO Best Execution price discovery, SpotVBBO allows institutions to trade on a lit, regulated market with designated counterparties under a best execution guarantee.

Key benefits include:

• Guaranteed best execution,
• Access institutional liquidity and elect your counterparties,
• Trade on a lit, regulated market,
• Deep pool of liquidity,
• Larger clip size - trade the total volume available at the EBBO or deeper across Europe's lit books in a single shape,
• No automatic impact to contributing order books.

Post-Trade

As a pan-European trading platform, Equiduct is connected to several European Clearing Houses. Connection to Equiduct’s post-trade environment provides interoperability allowing flexibility and additional cost savings.

These CCPs are:

• LCH Clearnet SA - Mandatory non-interoperable CCP for French, Belgian, Dutch and Portuguese instruments,
• LCH Clearnet Ltd - Interoperable CCP for UK, Italian, German, Swiss and Nordic instruments,
• SIX x-Clear - Interoperable CCP for UK, Italian, German, Swiss and Nordic instruments. Alternative preferred CCP for French, Belgian, Dutch and Portuguese instruments,
• EuroCCP - Interoperable CCP for UK, Italian, German, Swiss and Nordic instruments. Alternative preferred CCP for French, Belgian, Dutch and Portuguese instruments.

Where possible, Equiduct leverages the established home market post-trade environment thus allowing:

• No new membership costs,
• No new operational costs,
• Reduced set-up time,
• Same clearing fees as the Home Market,
• Cross netting efficiencies.

Real Time Market Data

Equiduct's pan European real-time data is available, with fees waived for trading members, via three market data products:

• Market-By-Limit:

Unique to the European trading landscape, the Market-By-Limit feed offers a complete real-time pan European consolidated order book and associated consolidated post-trade information.

• HybridBook:

A real-time low-latency data feed providing a view of Equiduct's central limit order book, HybridBook, along with full post-trade information for the Equiduct market.

• VBBO:

The Volume-weighted Best Bid and Offer (VBBO) is a real-time data feed for PartnerEx, providing the best executable price (Bid and Offer) at Retail (RMS) and Standard Market Size (SMS).

Index and Analytical Products

Equiduct also offers custom indices and analytics.

• Index Product

Equiduct offers customised index creation and real time index value dissemination, using proprietary VBBO pre-trade market data; available across a constituent pool of Europe’s 2,000 most liquid stocks. For more detailed information, please click here.

• Best Execution Analytics

Fully customisable reports for orders/transactions occurring away from Equiduct, including Best Execution comparative analysis and TCA.

• Monthly Best Execution Report

For customers using the PartnerEx and SpotVBBO services, reports documenting and proving Best Execution on a trade-by-trade basis are available daily and monthly free of charge.

In the coming years, trading will be encouraged onto lit venues due to tighter regulatory constraints and in order to provide best execution liquidity will need to be “chased” using smart order routers (SOR) and multiple venue access. All of this can be achieved via a single connection to Equiduct.

Download for more.

Read more about the Equiduct Trading System Market Model.