Boat is being set up by ABN Amro, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS to meet the trade data reporting and OTC pre-trade price transparency requirements of the EU's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID).

The system - which will collect, validate, store, manage and distribute European equity quote and trade report data - will by-pass those operated by the LSE and other European exchanges.

Markit and Cinnober have already been selected to supply the technology that will underpin Boat. Cinnober is providing the software that will form the basis of the platform and will supply hosting and operational services, while Markit will manage substantially all the business operations for member banks.

Under the agreement with BT Radianz and Colt, the two telcos will each host the Boat platform at their respective centres in London. Contributors and distributors will be able to connect to the platform via either provider.

The decision to dual-locate Boat's data hosting in London will ensure the platform has low latency and guarantee business continuity, says Markit.

Kevin Covington, EVP product and business development, BT Radianz, comments: "Boat's choice to host its service in our London data centre will provide the platform with the lowest-latency approach to delivering and receiving the highest quality equities data in the European market."

Meanwhile the seven banks behind Project Turquoise, a pan-European equities trading platform that will compete with the region's exchanges, are still searching for a platform supplier.

Reports surfaced earlier this year that the group had seen a number of suppliers including virt-X, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Plus Markets but the banks were thought to be some way off from making a decision.