ITG Launches POSIT Marketplace for Japanese Equities

Investment Technology Group (ITG), an agency research broker and financial technology firm, has expanded its POSIT Marketplace liquidity aggregation platform to include Japanese equities.

The Japanese launch follows the success of POSIT Marketplace in Hong Kong and Australia, which in 2011 has delivered an average of 13 basis points of price improvement on all trades and has seen volumes crossed nearly triple in the second quarter (compared with Q1, 2011), driven by a rise in the number of institutional clients using the platform.

Michael Corcoran, head of sales and trading for ITG in Asia Pacific, says finding liquidity continues to be a challenge for institutions trading in the region as the choice of off-exchange and dark pool liquidity grows. Given this, says Corcoran, there's a strong demand in Japan for liquidity aggregation given the growing number of liquidity pools and the higher level of average trading costs compared to markets such as the US.

POSIT's global coverage now encompasses Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, the US, Canada and 21 EMEA countries. POSIT currently has more than a 6 percent share of total European dark liquidity.

In the US, POSIT's average daily volume was 83 million shares in the second quarter of 2011, up 20 percent over the prior year, while average trade size in the POSIT Alert block indications crossing system was 37,000 shares.