Mr. Bankole will lead the sales effort across continental Europe for Knight Link, which provides institutional and retail broker-dealers with access to Knight's liquidity in more than 700 European equities.

Mr. Bankole joined Knight from NYSE Euronext where he was in charge of Global Account Management as well as additional responsibilities for NYSE ARCA Europe as Market Structure Manager. Prior to that, he was Deputy Director, Head of Prospect Management at Euronext Paris SA.

"Knight Link has an established footprint in the U.K. both in the institutional and the retail space, and we believe investors across Europe can also benefit from its liquidity and quality executions," Kee-Meng Tan, Managing Director and Head of the Electronic Trading Group in Europe. "Didier brings considerable experience to our expansion efforts on the continent where we look to raise our profile among broker-dealers and institutions and further highlight our market-making ability."

Officially launched in Europe in November 2009, Knight Link offers rapid order execution in a broad and growing range of pan-European large- and mid-cap equities. Knight Link provides institutional and retail broker-dealers access to Knight's unique liquidity, quality executions with high fulfilment rates, and low cost on a low-latency platform. Knight Link makes markets in more than 700 European-listed stocks including those in the UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

"The Knight Link model offers broker-dealers across continental Europe an opportunity to improve execution quality for their retail customers," Mr. Bankole said. "I look forward to showcasing Knight's strengths in volume and breadth of securities traded to new clients and helping to drive greater activity in Knight Link."

The UK Financial Services Authority authorises and regulates Knight Link as a Systematic Internaliser, in accordance with the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive. Knight Link is a Retail Services Provider (RSP) in the UK and a retail market maker on Equiduct's PartnerEx platform. Knight Link helps clients to achieve MiFID-mandated best execution requirements through a combination of high-quality stock execution and low transaction costs. This new source of liquidity for Europe is made possible by Knight's extensive market-making operation as well as Knight's access to the full range of trading venues in Europe.