Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME) will in the next few months increase the trading options offered by its electronic trading platform (SIBE) by offering the possibility of buying and selling shares with up to four decimal places.
This new feature of the Spanish stock exchange's electronic trading platform is expected to be operational in the second quarter of 2009.
The reasons for this change are the vast amount of buy and sell orders that are generated on the main Spanish stocks, which are among the most liquid in Europe, and the strengthening of the Spanish stock market so that it continues to be the liquidity pool where the best bid and ask prices for Spanish stocks are found.
BME is in close contact with market participants in order to update them on the future situation. Today BME started the testing phase on the first version of its SIBE platform with four-decimal prices. Last July all members of the Spanish stock market were informed of the technical details of the new situation.
Over the last few months BME has implemented a number of services to strengthen further the Spanish stock market:
- In July BME launched a new anonymous platform for block trades based on SIBE, in this way offering the financial community a new way of trading on the Spanish market. The new platform will comply with the MiFID regulations, the new rules which govern the European securities industry and widen the scope for new types of share trading.
- BME offers its market members a new service for the management of their transaction reporting (in MiFID terminology) to the Spanish stock market regulator, CNMV, as well as for transactions executed outside its own markets. This new service is compliant with the new transaction reporting arrangements set out in Section 59 bis of the Stock Market Act.