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June 6th, 2008 - One Central Facility Helps Solve Fragmentation Issues

Level Connects Major Sources of Liquidity

Jarrod Yuster, Head of Global Electronic and Portfolio Trading, Merrill Lynch: "For its customers, LeveL has reduced unnecessary complexity and overhead, as well as increased matching rates with anonymity."
LeveL ATS has announced that after two years of committed resources it has succeeded in helping to provide a solution to the challenges of the increasing fragmentation of dark liquidity. LeveL has achieved connectivity to most of the industry’s major sources of liquidity into one centralized crossing facility.

“LeveL integrates over thirty broker dealers to a single location where customers can interact with the industry’s leading sources of order flow,” said Whit Conary, President of LeveL ATS. “Our success is evident in our nearly 4 billion shares of liquidity sent to LeveL daily.”

“LeveL has become an integral part of our ability to trade with other leading broker dealers in a fair and open platform,” said Dan Mathisson, Managing Director and Head of Advanced Execution Services at Credit Suisse. “Our routers are able to find liquidity and price improvement in LeveL while maintaining the anonymity that is core to our mission.”

Driven by low cost pricing and a low latency, highly stable platform, LeveL has become the leading independent multi-broker crossing destination1. LeveL has witnessed record growth month after month. Q1 2008 saw a 64% increase over Q4 2007. LeveL has continued its growth, averaging 58 million shares of matched volume2 per day in April equaling a one month increase of 20%. The month of May3 has already seen LeveL’s matched volume2 grow to over 65 million shares per day.

"An independent crossing destination like LeveL provides an efficient way to solve for increased fragmentation," said Jarrod Yuster, Head of Global Electronic and Portfolio Trading at Merrill Lynch. "By providing a central access point for interacting with disparate, undisplayed liquidity, LeveL will minimize the need to split orders across multiple venues through a web of private linkages. For its customers, LeveL has reduced unnecessary complexity and overhead, as well as increased matching rates with anonymity."

“LeveL will continue to develop customer driven solutions that aggregate meaningful liquidity in a fragmented market,” continued Conary. “Customers who trade in LeveL have the ability to interact with a large, diverse pool of liquidity in one place. Block trades can be seamlessly executed in a fast and efficient manner with no information leakage or market impact.”

“Given the liquidity in LeveL, the ATS has to be incorporated into any comprehensive electronic best execution strategy. To that end, LeveL has become an essential destination for our LMX algorithmic trading and smart routing products,” said Brian Fagen, Managing Director and Co-Head of US Electronic Trading Services at Lehman Brothers.

“Instinet is always interested in fair and open platforms in which to execute on behalf of our clients and LeveL has become a very important venue for us,” said John Comerford, EVP, Head of Trading Research at Instinet. “Our Instinet Execution Experts are regularly able to find liquidity and price improvement in LeveL while maintaining anonymity in a stable platform.”

 

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