Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS are to link their private stock trading operations to improve liquidity and better compete with the increasing number of alternative exchanges. The move, to be announced Tuesday, will give clients of each bank access to the others’ so-called dark liquidity pools – the private interbank or intra-bank platforms widely used to trade stocks away from exchanges.
The pools are used by clients such as hedge funds to buy and sell large blocks of shares in complete anonymity and without the danger of moving the public price of a stock on an exchange. The development of dark pools is considered a potential threat to established exchanges.
