Trading in stocks, shares and other financial instruments is about to become a whole lot faster and more comprehensive with the expected appearance of Aquis Exchange, the proposed pan European stock exchange. And its appearance has taken a step nearer reality with the decision to establish its primary data center at the Equinix LD4 International Business Exchange (IBX) datacentre, inside the Equinix London Slough campus.
The new venture, which was established in October 2012, is still waiting final regulatory approval as a multilateral trading facility from the UK FCA. But it has been created to operate an important, and possibly very influential pan-European equities trading exchange. It is also developing exchange software.
Aquis plans to be one of the first exchanges to use subscription pricing and innovative order types. The subscription pricing works on a similar model to that of the telecoms industry and is designed to encourage participation from all categories of professional trading firm. Users will be charged according to the message traffic they generate, rather than a percentage of the value of each stock that they trade.
This is expected to benefit small firms that are traditionally disadvantaged by the pricing structure of existing exchanges.
Aquis chose the Equinix London Slough campus because of its comprehensive access to over 80 exchanges and trading platforms in 30 European markets. It will also exploit the Equinix Marketplace, which allows users to identify potential customers and partners from ecosystem participants offering services inside the Equinix datacentres.
The campus already houses equity platforms, as well as numerous FX platforms, dark pools, commodities, and new derivative products. Market participants may directly connect to the Aquis Exchange platform inside the campus via a local cross connection. This is expected to provide high levels of resilience and low latency for the new members of Aquis Exchange, and new connections will go live within 48 hours of ordering.
Equinix claims that 25 percent of the total European equities trade count already originate from the Slough campus.