Cowen, following the closing of its acquisition of Convergex Group (Convergex), has made the strategic decision to discontinue the Millennium ATS midpoint matching offering.
Millennium’s Form ATS has been amended to reflect this change and all subscribers and trading partners have been notified of the pending change. All midpoint matching in the Millennium ATS will end as of 23 June, 2017.
Jeffrey M Solomon (pictured), President of Cowen, says: “Over the past several years, many of our clients have expressed frustration with the amount of fragmentation in US equity markets. Some have also raised concerns regarding conflicts of interest that can arise in broker order routing. At Cowen, we have built our business around non-conflicted execution capabilities and the closure of the Millemmium dark pool reflects our commitment to market neutrality and best execution for our clients.”
Added Solomon, “This decision was one of the first and most important decisions we made following our acquisition of Convergex, and is reflective of Cowen’s consistent dedication to market structure issues. By discontinuing Millennium ATS’s midpoint matching engine, we had the ability to proactively reduce fragmentation, something we and many of our clients feel will improve US equity market structure. As we continue to grow our trading business, we will continue to innovate to help our clients find liquidity in a fragmented trading environment.”
Cowen will continue to operate the Millennium Crossing Facility (MCF), which is part of the Millennium ATS. This trade printing function runs separately from the midpoint matching engine. The MCF executes pre-matched orders and prints the resulting trades to the tape on behalf of exchange and broker-dealer partners. This crossing facility will continue going forward. However, any trading volume attributed to the Millennium ATS following June 23, 2017 will simply and solely reflect the volume of pre-matched trades within the Millennium ATS for trade reporting purposes. As of June 23, 2017, there will be no midpoint matching engine within the Millennium ATS and no continuous trading functionality. Millennium’s Form ATS has been amended to reflect this change.
