ING has extended the trading hours for its sprinters with clients of ING, Binck and Alex now able to trade the bank's leverage products between 8am and 10pm CET. The extended trading hours are possible because sprinters at ING, Binck and Alex are traded via Citigroup Automated Trading Services (Cats) - the trading platform operated by Börse Stuttgart which facilitates end-users, market makers, issuers, brokers and asset managers with trading and execution of structured products - and no longer via Euronext Amsterdam.
"In January 2016 we started trading sprinters on the Cats platform for our ING clients," said Sander van Baren (pictured), head of sprinters, ING. "With Cats we fulfill the client demand of more flexibility and extended trading hours. In the past years [Cats] has proven to be a stable and reliable platform. Clients trading sprinters on indices, FX, commodities and US shares benefit directly from these extended trading hours," said Van Baren.
At Cats, trading takes place between the end-investor and the market maker, which, in case of the sprinters, is ING. "Cats is a bilateral platform which means the market maker acts as counterparty for the client. In the past years we experienced that for 98% of all transactions we already act as counterparty," said Van Baren.
Until the start of the year, Binck had been the only provider of leverage products in the Netherlands to use the Cats facility to trade its own Binck turbos, with UBS acting as the market maker. "Due to our longstanding relationship with Binck we were able to offer our sprinters on Cats for clients of Binck as well," said Van Baren.
ING sprinters are available on bonds, commodities, currencies, indices and shares. The bank is one of seven providers of leverage products in the Dutch market with Binck, BNP Paribas, Citi, Commerzbank, Goldman Sachs and, since November 2016, Societe Generale, the other active issuers.
Last year, turnover of structured products (predominately leverage products) at Euronext Amsterdam was €9.2bn while the number of transactions stood at 1,983,047. BNP Paribas, with a turnover of €4.1bn was market leader followed by Goldman Sachs (€2.4bn), ING (1.7bn), Commerzbank (€632m) and Citi (€337m). At the same time, the turnover for Binck turbos on Cats was €2.5bn while the broker registered 639,096 trades.
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