So, Bats Europe has officially signed on to relocate its matching engines to Equinix’s LD4 facility in Slough, west of London. If all goes well, it will be up and running at its new location in October, as a new member of the ‘community’ there.
Of course, if all goes very well, by then the UK regulators will be making favourable noises on its acquisition of Chi-X Europe, which is currently resident in LD4. Bats and Chi-X just agreed to extend the terms of their acquisition agreement as a result of the decision by the regulators – in this case the UK’s Competition Commission – to review the deal. That review could last until early December.
Bats set up shop in Europe in 2008 at the London Docklands data centre of Savvis, which also hosts the exchange in the US, at its Weehawken, NJ facility.
Observers have suggested that the community effect of operating from LD4 could have been a driver in Bats’ decision. Other markets – for equities, fixed income and foreign exchange – are also hosted there, while some 250 market participants located at Equinix data centres in London, Frankfurt and Zurich will have ready access.
Bats is expected to maintain a high bandwidth link back to the Savvis facility for trading firms located there, and it’s also implemented a point-of-prescence at Interxion’s city data centre.
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