[ A D V E R T O R I A L ]
Xetra:
20 years of firsts
“A pioneer’s work is never done”: Dr. Martin Reck, managing director, Deutsche
Börse AG, reflects on how one of Europe’s premier electronic trading platforms
has been able to maintain its first mover status for two decades now.
T
oday, picturing the European
securities trading landscape
without Xetra seems virtually im-
possible. That was not always the
case: While Deutsche Börse had
played a leading role on the Ger-
man stock market, the European
angle first came into life with the
introduction of the first fully inte-
grated electronic trading platform
T7’s cutting-edge
technology delivers
ultra-low latency,
robustness and safe
handling of very high
throughput.
for German equities operated by a
regulated exchange in November
1997. Right from the beginning
Xetra has aimed to serve the needs
of different kind of clients ranging
from institutional investors, prop
traders, market makers to retail
investors and issuers. Now, approx-
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TheTrade
Winter 2017
imately 190 trading participants
from 16 European countries, as
well as from Hong Kong and the
United Arab Emirates benefit from
the highest liquidity in German
equities and ETFs, leading to
higher turnovers at more competi-
tive prices in these securities than
any other exchange worldwide can
offer. This heterogeneous order
flow coming from an internation-
al diversified clientele increases
the price quality and results in an
attractive international instrument
portfolio. Xetra holds a market
share of 90 percent in Germany,
and 65 percent in DAX® constitu-
ents trading throughout Europe.
Also, Xetra is not only world mar-
ket leader in German Blue chips
trading, it is the global reference
market for German shares and the
leading market in European ETF
trading, too. The trading platform
owes much of its success to its
superior trading technology which
has been innovated on a regular
basis over the last two decades.
With each new Xetra release
version, Deutsche Börse has not
only aimed for faster, better and
more reliable technology but has
provided additional, in many cases
exclusive benefits for market par-
ticipants, making trading on Xetra
safer and more efficient. Innovative
trading functionalities for different
types of securities, such as equities,
ETFs, funds, bonds and structured
products were created to answer
particular requirements partici-
pants might have in certain trading
situations in order to optimise the
trading efficiency for everyone.
One of Deutsche Börse’s latest
efforts to further optimise trading
efficiency on Xetra is nothing short
of a revolution: the migration to the
powerful state-of-the-art trading
architecture T7. T7’s cutting-edge
technology delivers ultra-low
latency, robustness and safe
handling of very high throughput.