LONDON, Aug 16 (Reuters) - SmartPool, a pan-European non-displayed trading unit of NYSE Euronext, on Monday said it was extending into trading mid-market capitalisation stocks.
The move comes as SmartPool, which was launched in February in partnership with HSBC, J.P. Morgan and BNP Paribas, saw the trading activities on its platform jump by over 90 percent in the second quarter.
Lee Hodgkinson, chief executive officer of Smartpool, said the trading platform could execute bigger mid-cap orders while narrowing the spreads for price improvements by improving liquidity.
Non-displayed trading platforms, or "dark pools", allow trades of a big block of shares to be carried out without displaying the size or the price before the completion. This attracts orders from institutional investors as they seek to minimize market impacts.
SmartPool, one of 13 dark pools in Europe, has signed up some 14 banks and brokers.
From September, SmartPool will extend its service to include all constituents of the following five mid-cap indexes:
- FTSE 250
- FTSE Italia Mid Cap
- MDAX
- SMIM
(Reporting by Daisy Ku; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)