Thomson Reuters has launched a consolidated pan-European securities data feed in an effort to combat the fragmentation of market data prices under the MiFID regulatory regime.
The new Thomson Reuters feed will pull together prices across multiple exchanges as a proliferation of new markets compete for business across Europe.
The new feed will offer access to all best "bid and offer" data plus all historical "tick-by-tick" data for the most liquid listed European equities at a cost of €10 per seat per month.
The consolidated tape enables firms to comply with MiFID's best execution requirements via a new Reuters instrument code (RIC) known as the .xbo (consolidated best bid and offer) and .xt (consolidated trade tape).
In addition, the vendor also announced an analytical tool called Equity Market Share Reporter (EMSR) that allows firms to validate their choice of execution venues and the formation of the execution policy that MiFID requires them to publish.
In November last year, The UK Investment Management Association (IMA) said that the MiFID rule changes had led to a deterioration in the quality of information available to buy-side traders as dealing fragmented across multiple competing venues. The trade body called for the creation of a central data repository, modelled on the US consolidated tape system.
The issue was first brought to the fore when the LSE's TradElect system was hit by connectivity problems for a whole day last year. The majority of traders did not switch to other platforms - such as Chi-X and Turquoise - when TradElect went down because they still rely on the LSE to provide benchmark pricing.
Steve Wilson, global head of exchange traded instruments, at Thomson reuters comments: "The introduction of MiFID has created market fragmentation and exposed the need for an independent consolidated tape and best execution tools. Our launch today is in direct response to industry calls for such services."