The company claims that the European transfer to the Universal Trading Platform represents a key milestone in the new electronic trading platform’s roll-out across NYSE Euronext cash and derivatives markets in Europe and the United States.

It began the migration in December, and it is a key part of the cost savings that the group hopes to achieve after the merger of NYSE and Euronext in 2007. Last week the exchange group reported a loss of $738 million for the full year 2008, but this included a a pre-tax $1,590 million non-cash charge, primarily for the impairment of certain goodwill and indefinite-lived intangible assets related to the merger of NYSE Group and Euronext.

The Universal Trading Platform will also offer access to the company’s new European multilateral-trading facilities (MTFs): NYSE Arca Europe and SmartPool. Ultimately, trading customers will be provided with connectivity to all the NYSE Euronext markets through one world class, ultra-low latency global network.

Roland Bellegarde, group executive vice president and head of European execution for NYSE Euronext, said, “We believe that our customers will immediately benefit from one single point of access to all our cash equities markets in Europe, thereby reducing costs and producing a dramatic increase in market efficiency. The introduction of the Universal Trading Platform is strategically important to our business, and gives us a significant competitive advantage in Europe, enabling us to meet the emerging needs of both existing and future customers.”

Anthony Attia, executive director and head of the Universal Trading Platform Programme, said, “The delivery of the second stage in the roll-out of the Universal Trading Platform demonstrates NYSE Euronext’s commitment to continuous innovation in order to provide technology-driven efficiencies to our customers. They will benefit from the superior functionality, faster speed and much greater capacity of the Universal Trading Platform.”

The company claims that customers trading on NYSE Euronext European cash markets will realise reduced latencies from 1.5 milliseconds per roundtrip on NSC to 150-400 microseconds per roundtrip on the Universal Trading Platform, which can also handle 100,000 orders per second.

Stanley Young, CEO of NYSE Technologies and co-Global CIO of NYSE Euronext said,“The Universal Trading Platform, which was developed by our in-house technology and business teams, provides a truly advanced market infrastructure and is based on the best-of-breed NYSE Euronext systems and technology. We see a tremendous opportunity to offer the Universal Trading Platform solutions set to other markets and financial service firms globally as a commercial offering from NYSE Technologies.”

Following the successful migration of the European bond market in December 2008, this second phase of the company-wide implementation of the Universal Trading Platform will be followed by its deployment on NYSE Arca Europe, NYSE Euronext’s new MTF which is set to launch in March 2009, and the NYSE Arca equities market in the US in the third quarter of this year.