The London Stock Exchange has set itself a busy schedule of IT
projects, beginning with the completion of the integration of
Italian trading to its Tradelect trading platform.
The stock exchange announced its full-year results
today,reportinga loss of just over £250m before tax. This was the
result of it taking a charge of nearly £500m, largely related to
its acquisition of the Borsa Italianaexchange. Its pre-tax profit
last year was £227m.
David Lester, CIO at the London Stock Exchange, said the
migration of trades from Borsa Italiana's Affari platform to
Tradelect is almost complete. The London Stock Exchange bought the
Milan-based Borsa Italiana stock exchange for £1.63bn in June
2007.
In November, the exchange transferred the 360 company shares
listed on the Italian system to Tradelect. It will
complete the migration of all trading in the next few weeks,
said Lester.
The IT department's last couple of years have been dominated by
building and introducing its latest core trading platform,
Tradelect.
"The focus for technology is moving to the next phase," said
Lester.
Major projects in the next year will includeupgrading the
interface that traders use to trade on the London Stock Exchange.
Lester said the Fix and Fit interface will make connectivity
easier.
He said Tradelect can now complete a trade in 3.7 milliseconds,
but the IT team will continue to reduce this.
The exchange will also launch its
Baikal trading system in two phases. This is what is known as a
dark pool, which allows traders to execute shares without
displaying the pre-trade prices to rivals.
"We have selected Fidessa and Quanthouse as our technology and
information partners," said Lester.
The company is also replacing a 20-year-old system used for
trading derivatives by moving these trades to the Sola platform
from the Toronto/Montreal exchange.
Trades from the Oslo Bors, which the London Stock Exchange has a
partnershipwith, will also be migrated to Tradelect this year.