GL Trade Launches Free MiFID Services

GL Trade is offering free data collection services to help firms cope with new transparency requirements under the European Union's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, by using GL's existing infrastructure to collect quotes from institutions seeking to publish prices, and providing them as part of a consolidated market feed.

MiFID is expected to result in more data sources as new Multi-lateral Trading Facilities (MTFs) launch and banks classify themselves as Systematic Internalizers (SIs)-both of which are required to advertise pre-trade quotes under MiFID.

"We see ourselves as one of the... prime market data aggregators," says Philippe Carré, head of GL Trade's connectivity business. The vendor has already established a partnership with Instinet's Chi-X, and is in discussions with pan-European exchange Equiduct and other bank consortia. "[We're] developing to and making available all of the different market feeds from brokers, MTFs, SIs and any other institution that is looking at distributing information," he says.

As well as helping firms meet transparency obligations, the service should also make it easier to access liquidity as the network "will disseminate non-tradable prices [via the consolidated feed] and will link any tradable prices to our ASP [trading connectivity] offering that allows people to interact with the liquidity," says Carré.

The vendor's feed would also allow users to comply with MiFID's best-execution requirements by providing a configurable means for end users to compare multiple sources of data, Carré says.

Although GL Trade will initially focus on helping firms meet pre-trade transparency requirements, the vendor may also offer solutions for distributing data from post-trade reporting initiatives such as Project Boat, to which Carré says the vendor wants to provide access.