BME's co-location service will start operations on November 12th in its Data Processing Centre, in Madrid. In addition, BME will provide high-tech facilities to house its Market Member's automatic trading systems.
The goal of this service is to improve the speed of access to the Spanish market, in this way enhancing liquidity and improving price formation.
Five firms have applied for the new service, which allows financial firms to place their servers just a few meters away from BME's Cash and Derivatives trading platforms. This closeness will significantly reduce the communication times between both systems, as a result of which Market Members will enjoy greater operational capacity. The whole infrastructure of the service will be managed by specialised BME staff, in this way ensuring fairness in terms of access and a secure system.
In order to meet operational needs within the stock markets, the real time prices supplied by BME Market Data will also be accessible from the same facilities.