Turquoise, the bank-backed MiFID-compliant equities trading facility established by nine investment banks, has finally gone live.
Turquoise chief executive Eli Lederman told Reuters reporters that the first trades started going through the platform at 8am.
Lederman said members would "take a while to get comfortable" with the system and volumes will be small until the first clearing and settlement cycles are completed.
The platform is initially offering trading in just 10 stocks - five each from the UK and Germany. The system will be extended to 1300 stocks across 13 European markets in the next few weeks.
The launch follows news earlier this week that rival ATS Chi-X Europe saw its market share in FTSE 100 stocks hit 20%. Chi-X Europe has steadily increased its share of European trading since it launched last year.
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) said last month that it would cut trading fees and introducing incentives for liquidity providers in a bid to attract algorithmic traders and fight off competition from ATSs launching in its markets.
In addition to Turquoise and Chi-X, the LSE and other domestic exchanges will soon face further competition from Bats Trading, Equiduct and the Nasdaq OMX Europe platform.
Turquoise share trading platform goes live - Reuters