BATS Europe, the operator of European multilateral trading facility (MTF), has decided to add a pan-European smart order routing service for access to multiple market centres including exchanges, MTFs and dark pools, effective February 15, 2010.

BATS Europe’s smart order router features Cycle strategy. With Cycle, orders are routed to pan-European market centres, searching for liquidity at the best price points up to, and including, the limit price on the original order.

BATS Europe said that the routing fee for Cycle will be 0.50 basis points for all securities. The routing fee for accessing dark pools is 0.30 basis points for all securities. Fees for accessing BATS Europe order books remain unchanged.

Mark Hemsley, CEO of BATS Europe, said: “Our new smart order routing solution is designed to give BATS Europe’s market participants even more choice for deploying their trading strategies whilst minimising market access complexities and costs of meeting best execution criteria. Smart order routing is one of a series of new features for BATS Europe that we expect to lead to further growth in market share and notional value traded.”

Kansas-based BATS Global Markets is a global financial markets technology company. BATS serves the European market through its London-based, FSA-authorised subsidiary, BATS Europe, which operates a multilateral trading facility for European securities.