Appital, the Equity Capital Marketplace, today announced its cooperation with Turquoise, the pan-European MTF, majority owned by London Stock Exchange Group in partnership with the user community, to unlock latent liquidity opportunities and bring further efficiency to equity capital markets.
Appital gives the buy-side community greater exposure to deal flow opportunities they have not been able to access before. The Appital platform unlocks latent liquidity and efficiently drives a bookbuilding process, providing deal originators with opportunities to execute large volumes, often in excess of 5 days of ADV, with minimal market impact or risk of price erosion. At the same time, the platform enables deal participants to highlight the types and sizes of opportunities they are looking for, specifying market, sector, market cap and size of interest.
Block trading has become increasingly mainstream among institutional investors seeking access to liquidity, with block trading mechanism Turquoise Plato Block Discovery reporting record volumes over the last year.
The cooperation between Appital and Turquoise brings together complementary capabilities to the benefit of issuers and investors. Appital users will be able to execute all deals through the Turquoise MTF, via a single point of access and with seamless straight-through-processing (STP) to over 20 settlement venues. Additionally, institutional investors will be able to take advantage of an innovative and efficient way to access liquidity opportunities and trade in a market for size, at the best price.
Appital is actively building out its platform and technology infrastructure with forward-looking buy-side firms and vendors for a launch later this year.
Mark Badyra, CEO of Appital, said: “We are delighted to partner with Turquoise to provide the buy-side community with the ability to proactively source liquidity in the market and interact with like-minded institutions in the liquidity formation process. Working with a champion of innovation such as Turquoise is allowing us to realise our ambition to give institutional investors real-time visibility, full transparency and maximum control over the bookbuilding and deal distribution process.”
Badyra added: “Both of our firms are committed to delivering technological solutions for the buy-side and we see this as a real opportunity to continue to promote London and the UK as a centre of excellence for innovation within global capital markets.”
Dr Robert Barnes, CEO, Turquoise Global Holdings & Group Head of Securities Trading at LSEG, commented: “Turquoise is committed to serving our customers through innovation. Connecting to Appital will bring additional transparency and automation to the process of liquidity discovery. I look forward to continuing our cooperation with Appital to unlock liquidity for investors.”
Brian Guckian, Chief Business Development Officer, Appital, added: “The combination of Appital and Turquoise is a true evolution of the market and provides a venue for the buy-side to drive liquidity and efficiently trade the full spectrum of trade sizes.”