Hotspot, the institutional foreign exchange market owned and operated by BATS Global Markets, is to expand its European presence with the launch of its first Europe-based FX matching engine later this year. The new matching engine will be located in the London Slough Campus data centres and will target Europe and Asia and specific FX currencies that dominate the European and Asian trading hours.
BATS Chi-X Europe has appointed David Howson, formerly of Equiduct Systems, as its chief operating officer.
Senior market participants have expressed outrage that exchanges continue to charge high fees for market data, while MTFs still lack the means to compete on auctions and are not represented on international indices.
Technical problems at Nasdaq and BATS have reinforced the impression among many market observers that there may be something seriously wrong with equity market structure. Recent history reads like a catalogue of disaster for many of the world’s most prominent trading venues.
US exchange operator BATS Global Markets’ revelation earlier this week that it may have accidentally breached best execution regulation on thousands of client transactions over a four-year period has been criticised by senior buy-side traders, who have expressed disappointment at the failure of exchanges to serve long-term investors.
