Instinet and Virtu Financial launch liquidity streaming relationship

Providing buy and sell side clients with aggregated liquidity in anticipation of MiFID II regulations

London – June 26, 2017 – Instinet Europe Limited and Virtu Financial Ireland Limited (Virtu) announced today that they have entered into a bilateral liquidity streaming relationship. This relationship provides Instinet’s buy and sell side clients with aggregated liquidity and opportunities for price improvement.

Instinet clients now have access to additional liquidity at the touch, filling a gap between lit venues and large in scale blocks. This provides opportunities for price improvement and larger size fills, which minimizes clients’ footprint in the market. Instinet’s agency aggregation services already connect to conditional and over the counter (OTC) liquidity venues, as well as exchanges and Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTF).

The liquidity streaming relationship also provides clients with new options to interact with market maker liquidity. Clients remain anonymous but the arrangement provides the liquidity provider with Instinet as a known counterparty, to which the liquidity provider can offer price improvement and larger size.

As the marketplace anticipates MiFID II regulatory changes to liquidity provision, a shift toward bilateral trading relationships and the registration of additional Systematic Internalisers (SIs), market participants will be required to change the way they route orders, interact with, and access sources of liquidity. This relationship with Virtu reinforces Instinet’s commitment to offer more diverse sources of liquidity, and to simplify the potential post- MiFID II execution process for the firm’s buy and sell side clients.

“The trading environment is poised to become even more complex, while at the same time, clients will be asked to attest to their best execution practices. Instinet’s highly configurable infrastructure can be tailored to each client, which enables us to serve as their agency-model hub or neutral curator of diverse sources of liquidity,” said Richard Parsons, CEO of Instinet Europe Limited.

Christiaan Scholtes, Head of EMEA Markets at Virtu, said: “As the liquidity landscape in Europe undergoes a fundamental paradigm shift, we’re looking for intelligent ways to adapt. We see this relationship as an opportunity to transparently and efficiently provide our risk liquidity to a broader set of participants through Instinet’s high quality, neutral agency platform.”

Media Contacts
Instinet: Andrea Forskitt – +1 (212) 436-8487
Virtu: Andrew Smith – +1 (212) 418-0195 | media@virtu.com

About Instinet
As the equity execution services arm of the Nomura Group, Instinet Incorporated’s subsidiaries provide independent, agency-model brokerage services to clients throughout the world. Through its advanced suite of electronic trading tools, experienced high-touch trading group and unparalleled access to insightful content and liquidity, Instinet helps institutions lower overall trading costs and ultimately improve investment performance. Over the course of its 45+ year history, Instinet has introduced a range of now industry-standard trading technologies as well as the world’s first major electronic trading venue, one of the first U.S. ECNs and the Chi-X businesses. For more information, please visit instinet.com.

About Virtu Financial, LLC
Virtu is the global leader in electronic market making. We actively make markets across a broad range of asset classes including equities, foreign exchange, commodities, options and fixed income, providing two-sided liquidity on over two hundred market centers around the world. As market makers, we lower costs for both retail and institutional investors by supplying competitive bids and offers, without seeking to take on risky directional positions. Virtu’s liquidity provision plays a vital role in the overall health and efficiency of the global financial markets, especially in times of market turbulence.