LONDON, July 16 (Reuters) - Equity trading platform BATS on Thursday announced the launch of its dark pool, the 15th such anonymous stock trading platform to launch in Europe as price competition intensifies.
BATS said it will attempt to draw liquidity to its platform with rebates.
High frequency computer-driven electronic trading has reduced the average trading order size on European bourses, or the displayed "lit" order, to 10,000 euros ($14,090) per trade from 15,500 euros per trade a year ago.
That has left traders willing to pay higher fees for so-called dark pools, as bigger block of shares could be executed without disclosing the size or the price, hence achieving price improvement by minimizing market impacts.
Launching the dark pool on Aug. 7, BATS will rebate 0.1 basis points that add liquidity and charge 0.25 basis points to remove liquidity in a so-called "maker-taker" pricing for its dark pool.
By comparison, SmartPool, a pan-European dark pool unit of NYSE Euronext , charges 0.5 to 1 basis points while Turquoise charges 0.5 basis points for all executed dark orders and Chi-X charges 0.3 basis points for orders actively seeking liquidity in its dark pool.
Turquoise and Chi-X both said they have no intention of introducing the rebate scheme as they don't see it a constructive step for either liquidity or execution quality in their non-display services. (Reporting by Daisy Ku; Editing by Rupert Winchester)