Spanish Stock Exchange Extends European Connectivity with New London Gateway

Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME), the main financial trading venue in Spain, has reported advancements in the number of overseas access points available on its trading framework. The Madrid-based exchange has enhanced the speed of access to the venue’s Trading Platform for traders in the UK. The exchange’s technological arm, Visual Trader, will act as the main bridge between the two connecting points opening a new point of access to the Spanish stock market in London.

The latest extension is the third point connecting global traders to the growing Spanish stock market. Details issued by the venue state that the technology is fully equipped with the necessary communications infrastructure for investors to connect to the Spanish electronic equity and derivatives trading platforms.

According to José Parga, CEO of Visual Trader at BME, who commented in a statement; "The new node will be a breakthrough in terms of speed, quality and ease of access to the Spanish cash and derivatives markets, helping to increase Liquidity and closer ties between BME and financial institutions in London."

The BME’s new access point will be located in the Equinix London Slough Data Centre campus, which will host the access node. Equinix’s data centre campus is popular among participants in the financial trading space and hosts the IT systems of more than 200 financial institutions and technology providers, making it easier for new investment firms to access BME.

The venue has reported that the new system will be fully functional and operational by late January 2015. The Slough access point is expected to add value to the BME as its volumes grow significantly and it attracts new participants. November’s metrics were positive for the venue as it saw equity volumes rise 25% over the year with its ETF product range seeing a spike in activity with a rise of 131%.

The new access point uses high capacity fiber optic lines connected to Madrid by separate routes in order to ensure the continuity of the service. The network used for the connection ensures maximum data transmission speed thus reducing the latency to only 11.3 milliseconds, a 20% improvement on the current link, previously the access points latency was fourteen milliseconds.

The campus is a leading co-location and proximity hosting hub for the most important international equity buy and sell—side firms in the world, besides being a connection node for other European and North American markets, enabling BME members to receive orders from other marketplaces worldwide.

BME has been evolving its systems to cater to the growing number of automated and algorithmic traders. In 2010, it upgraded its systems as the rising high-frequency traders were taking heed of global markets. The BME reported to the media that over 30% of trading volumes arise from HFT.