Share trading platform Turquoise to launch August 18

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Project Turquoise, an alternative European cash equities trading platform established by a group of big investment banks, will go live on August 18, a senior Turquoise executive said on Wednesday.

Backed by Citigroup (C.N), Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Merrill Lynch MER.N, Morgan Stanley (MS.N), UBS (UBSN.VX), Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX), Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) and Societe Generale (SOGN.PA), Turquoise is one of the multilateral trading facilities, or MTFs, being set up to challenge the virtual monopolies long enjoyed by many traditional national stock exchanges in Europe.

"We will go live on August 18," Turquoise Chief Operating Officer Adrian Farnham told reporters in Frankfurt, Germany's financial capital.

Turquoise expects to have signed up about 50 trading members by that time, Farnham said. That compares with 65 banks and brokerages now trading on rival MTF Chi-X Europe, part of Japanese Nomura Holdings' (8604.T) broker agency Instinet.

In operation for 15 months, Chi-X Europe has by now reached average daily turnover of between 2.7 billion and 3.0 billion euros, Chi-X Europe Chief Executive Peter Randall told the same briefing.

Chi-X trades primarily British, French, German, Swiss and Dutch blue-chip stocks.

Frankfurt stock exchange operator Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE) said last week average daily turnover in its electronic order-matching system Xetra fell to 7.6 billion euros between April 1 and June 16 compared with 11.3 billion in the whole of the first quarter and 10.3 billion in full-year 2007.

Randall said trading data suggested that MTFs such as Chi-X, which says it is cheaper and faster than traditional exchanges, have taken market share from the incumbents.

Farnham said Turquoise, too, aimed to be a serious contender.

"We are not a niche player. We are a true pan-European market. We expect to compete head-to-head with the London Stock Exchange (LSE.L), Deutsche Boerse and NYSE.L Euronext (NYX.N)," he said.

On its launch date, Turquoise would offer trading in five securities. This would grow to 300 open order-book securities and an additional 1,200 so-called dark pool securities, or stocks for which neither the price nor the identity of the trading company is displayed, by early September, Farnham said.