Knight Capital Group (Nasdaq: NITE) today announced the official launch of Knight Link in Europe, an innovative trading model for European equities which provides institutional and retail broker-dealers with access to Knight's unique liquidity.
"We are very excited to be launching Knight Link in Europe," said Kee-Meng Tan, Managing Director, Head of the Electronic Trading Group in Europe. "Knight Link is designed to bring European clients quality executions with high fulfilment rates and low cost on a low-latency platform."
Knight Link is authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Service Authority as a Systematic Internaliser, in accordance with the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive. Knight Link helps clients to achieve MiFID-mandated best execution requirements through a combination of high-quality stock execution and low transaction costs.
"Knight Link is customisable to each client's needs and preferences," Mr. Tan added. "We accommodate a wide range of trading architectures and capacity requirements based on our leading technology, extensive market-making operation, and connectivity to the full range of trading venues in Europe."
Knight introduced Knight Link to a handful of institutions with European operations in January 2009, and Knight Capital Europe Limited commenced business as a Retail Service Provider in the U.K. in June 2009. Knight also will begin offering its market-making services on the Equiduct regulated market shortly, bringing best execution to the continental European retail market. Knight Link offers rapid order execution in a broad and growing range of pan-European large- and mid-cap equities, bringing together execution of institutional and retail flow. Since early 2009, Knight Link has added both institutional and retail broker-dealer clients, regularly trading more than US$100 million (€67 million) daily.
Knight Link in Europe is based on the highly successful model Knight developed for trading in the U.S. equity markets. In the U.S., Knight Link provides access to one of the largest sources of off-exchange liquidity in the marketplace with 129 million U.S. equity shares traded daily in October 2009.
Knight provides clients with voice and electronic access and trading in Europe through our London-based trading operations. Knight is a direct member of more than 20 European exchanges and multilateral trading facilities (MTFs).