Institutional alternative trading system Liquidnet claims to have traded nearly $11.5 billion of Nyse-listed equities in its first four quarters, placing the firm among Plexus Group's 30 largest institutional broker/dealers for exchange-listed trading.
In addition, Liquidnet also ranked #1 for large block executions in both Nyse and Nasdaq stocks for trades of 50,000 shares or more.
"The decline of the average execution size on the exchanges and a collapsed depth in the market has made it next to impossible to trade large blocks, particularly at prevailing market prices," says Liquidnet CEO Seth Merrin. "Liquidnet has proven to be a powerful institutional trading tool in executing large block trades with little to no market impact."
Liquidnet's community of buy-side institutions has grown from 38 live firms to 125 since its April 2001 launch.
Merrin says Liquidnet will launch its European offering in the next few days, enabling European fund managers to negotiate large blocks of US, UK, French, German, Swiss and Dutch equities directly and anonymously across the exchange - bypassing exchanges and intermediaries.
"What the last few years have proven is that order-flow is portable," says Merrin. "Traders don't care where they execute as long as they get the best possible execution."