The London Stock Exchange is proposing to phase out the Seaq quote-driven share trading system, according to a report in British broadsheet The Guardian.
The newspaper says that a meeting with a group of investment bankers and institutional fund managers was held last week at which Exchange officials claimed that the quality of trading in many medium-sized companies in London had deteriorated to the point where a completely new approach to market dealings is now required.
The report says that the Exchange wants some sort of hybrid system incorporating the execution and settlement benefits of an order-driven system, such as a central counterparty, with the liquidity provided by the system of specialists used by the New York Stock Exchange.
"We are looking at how best we can extend the benefit of an order-driven environment to those 130 stocks in the FTSE 250 that are not already on Sets," a spokesman for the LSE told the newspaper.
The spokesman said the Seaq proposals had been discussed with an advisory group, but that no decisions had yet been taken.