As a non-displayed liquidity pool for block equity trading, SLS offers traders access to volumes that are not available on "lit" or visible order books of traditional stock exchanges and Multilateral Trading Facilities. This helps traders who want to buy or sell large blocks of shares find counterparties and execute their trades with no market impact to share prices and other trading activity. SLS currently supports French, German, Dutch, Swiss and UK equities. This will be soon extended to six additional European markets. SunGard's hosted Valdi service for SLS helps firms access SLS easily and cost-effectively.

As a hosted service, Valdi helps reduce the cost of owning and managing the technology infrastructure, helping exchange members and their direct market access clients trade on global exchanges from any Valdi workstation or FIX application.

SunGard's offices in Switzerland provide local support as well as technical points of presence that give local customers efficient access to global trading venues through the SunGard Global Network.

Christoph Landis, head of operations at SIX Swiss Exchange, said, "SunGard's Valdi offers a cost-effective and easy way for firms to access our exchange, including the universe of soon to be more than 4,200 international securities we offer with SLS. This will facilitate the growth of participants in our exchange and offer new opportunities to brokers looking at additional venues to execute trades."

Per Loven, head of international corporate strategy at Liquidnet Europe, said, "SunGard's connection to SIX Swiss Exchange is a great step to providing additional ways for SIX Swiss Exchange participants to access our trading service cost-effectively and with reduced market impact to share prices or trading activity."

Philippe Carré, global head of connectivity for SunGard's capital markets business, said, "Market fragmentation in Europe is driving trading firms to seek new sources of liquidity. Valdi is already used by many SIX Swiss Exchange members worldwide for trading through access to the exchange's STI and CTI interfaces for basic services and high speed connectivity. Now firms can also participate in the SLS trading venue via Valdi's SaaS-based solution."