The new directive - which is expected to come into force on 1 November 2007 - will enable banks to offer financial products across all 25 EU member states. Banks will be able to trade shares internally, off-exchange, but will be required to publish the prices of intended trades to the rest of the market beforehand.

But a survey of Liquidnet Europe's buy-side membership base found that 55% of respondents believe the directive will be expensive to implement and will provide little benefit. A quarter - 27.7% - feel that complying with the regulation would be inexpensive but would not benefit them. Only 16.7% think that complying with MiFID will be inexpensive and show a positive ROI.

Furthermore, when asked if in its current form MiFID would deliver best execution once implemented, the majority of respondents - 66.7% - answered negatively, while just a third (33.3%) answered in the affirmative.

Sightly more institutions (38.9%) view the introduction of the Directive as positive for business, against 33.3% who rate it as detrimental to buy-side prospects.

Over half (55.6%) of respondents said that their use of electronic venues will increase as a result of MiFID, while 44.4% said their use of electronic trading networks will not change.

Almost half of respondents (43.8%) said their firm does not plan to spend any money at all to meet the MiFID requirements.