River Cross, the latest broker consortium in the crowded dark-liquidity space, expects to be up and running in the second quarter. The anonymous, fully automated block crossing platform was incubated at Susquehanna Financial Group.
River Cross will be an independent company, owned by Susquehanna and a group of broker-dealers. These brokers may include firms with equity stakes in LeveL and Block Interest Discovery Service, the two broker consortia that already exist. The platform is expected to have outside developers, staff and salespeople. River Cross will offer a crossing model that is unlike existing models, says David Margulies, who is in charge of sales for the program and algorithmic trading group at Susquehanna Financial Group.
Margulies notes that crossing systems have a match rate that, on the high end, is 6 percent to 9 percent. “So your chance of getting an order done isn’t great,” he says. “There are ways in River Cross that you could greatly increase those chances.” Trades in River Cross will occur within the national best bid and offer.