Liquidnet, the top brokerage firm for global trading(1), announced its second quarter 2007 results today, posting record performance in the United States, Europe, and Canada.
In addition, the rapid integration with Miletus Trading, an agency-only quantitative broker acquired March 2007, has accrued immediate benefit to Liquidnet's Membership by providing new program trading functionality.
"It is especially gratifying to see our strategy of building a single global institutional marketplace progressing so quickly," said Seth Merrin, CEO of Liquidnet. "We saw a nice increase in our average daily liquidity and believe we will continue to benefit from the greater global emphasis on achieving best execution and the expanding spectrum of trading opportunities presented by our Miletus acquisition."
Liquidnet Europe led the firm's global growth for the quarter, posting a record for principal traded with 7.5 billion pounds. Liquidnet Canada increased its average daily liquidity 44 percent to nearly 127 million shares. And Liquidnet U.S. had a record day for trading volume on April 26 with 90,757,700 shares; in addition, Members crossed 50 one-million or greater trades in the quarter.
Miletus Trading clients began benefiting from the first Liquidnet/Miletus integrated product - a set of hybrid strategies that combine the two firms' functionalities. It has resulted in market impact savings of as much as 24 cents per share. This equates to portfolio-level performance enhancement of approximately 3.12 cents per share, when compared with Liquidnet's crossing rate of 13 percent.
Liquidnet (U.S.)
In addition to a record day for trading volume and the most million-share or greater trades in a quarter with 50, Liquidnet expanded its liquidity pool to a record 3.28 billion shares, with two billion shares through the negotiated pool and another 1.2 billion delivered to Liquidnet H2O through the firms' 18 Streaming Liquidity Partners. Liquidnet also posted an average execution size of more than 52,000, the highest in 20 quarters.
Average daily negotiated volume during the second quarter (54.6 million shares,) was the second-highest ever for the firm, behind a record Q1 2007 (56.8 million), and represented a 17 percent increase year-over-year.
Liquidnet Europe
Liquidnet Europe's 7.5 billion pounds in principal traded represents a 10 percent increase over last quarter's 6.8 billion pounds and a 90.72 percent rise from the same period a year ago (3.9 billion pounds). Total European Principal Liquidity for the quarter was 567,310,417,726 pounds. The number of member firms rose 11 percent over last quarter to 71 from 64.
Liquidnet Canada Liquidnet Canada continued its aggressive rise since its launch on October 14, 2006, recording a 44 percent increase in average daily liquidity over last quarter (127 million shares vs. 88 million shares), a 24 percent quarterly increase in average daily volume (505 thousand shares vs. 407 thousand shares).
1. According to Institutional Investor December 2006 issue. Includes brokerages with greater than $2.25 billion in principal traded