SmartPool unveils trading volumes boost

LONDON (Reuters) - SmartPool says its trading volumes hit record levels in the second quarter and it is now the third-largest alternative equity trading platform, with the biggest average trade size of the top three in Europe.

The platform said matched volume of 5.7 billion euros (4.6 billion pound) in the second quarter of 2010 was a 473 percent quarterly increase, the fastest growth of a multilateral trading facility (MTF) in that period.

SmartPool is a European dark liquidity pool created by NYSE Euronext (NYX.N) in partnership with HSBC (HSBA.L), JP Morgan (JPM.N) and BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA).

Dark pools enable would-be buyers and sellers of large equity positions to avoid revealing pre-trade information and signalling their intentions to the rest of the market.

SmartPool Chief Executive Lee Hodgkinson told Reuters that the larger-than-average trade size was a sign that the platform was delivering on its objective of allowing clients to make big trades efficiently.

European regulators have recently raised their focus on dark pools, concerned about their lack of transparency. But in June all MTF-operated dark pools, Thomson Reuters data shows, accounted for only 0.98% of all reported trades and 1.8% of all electronic trading in June.

(Reporting by Alex Chambers, editing by Will Waterman)