Pico, a provider of technology services for the financial markets community globally, has added to its European network of exchange colocation facilities with the launch of hosting services at the Borsa Italiana exchange colocation facility in Milan.
This latest phase in Pico’s strategic expansion of its European solutions, provides ultra-low latency access to Borsa Italiana trading platforms and real-time market data services. The Milan exchange colocation facility provides direct access to Borsa Italiana equity and fixed income markets (MTA, ETF Plus, MOT, SEDEX), derivatives markets (IDEM, IDEX) and Euro TLX bond markets.
As the first managed service provider to gain access to this facility, Pico has already connected the location in Milan to the PicoNet backbone and Pico’s other global exchange colocation points of presence, in all the major financial centers, via a high-speed 10Gbps fully diverse network supported by Corvil’s best-in-class analytics.
Pico is now able to offer clients the lowest latency access currently possible to Borsa Italiana’s equity and derivatives markets in a cost-effective multi-tenant environment, or a specifically engineered dedicated environment. Pico believes that clients will benefit from Pico’s specialist technology, agile and experienced delivery teams and true follow-the-sun in-house operations and support.
Emma Wheeler (pictured), Chief Commercial Officer at Pico, says, “Announcing this extension of our European buildout and providing our clients with direct access to Borsa Italiana from within the data center, is an important strategic milestone.” She added, “We plan to continue to add new markets and access additional liquidity sources for our clients around the globe with the goal of enabling them to leverage our speed to market and empowering them to succeed in this competitive marketplace.”
Participants will be interested in Pico’s Milan co-location offering because of the specific characteristics of the Milan markets. Borsa Italiana co-location is an optimal technical solution for screen traders and liquidity providers in the Milan market. The most liquid trading venue to trade Italian equity derivatives globally, IDEM has more than 20 electronic global market making firms providing liquidity on a regular basis – offering increased assurance of execution during times of stress and volatility.
Further, Borsa Italiana’s MTA features the highest turnover velocity amongst the European equity markets – a measure of the relative activity of the market and thus a draw for algorithmic traders and market makers – on a global scale. This is a testament to MTA’s market quality and liquidity, which has enabled it to capture almost 75 per cent of Italian equities trading volume—a percentage that remains a record at the European level, even 12 years after MiFID fragmentation.
