“In speaking with our Canadian clients, it’s clear that there is a rapidly growing demand for fully electronic, off-exchange liquidity sources,” stated Tal Cohen, SVP at Instinet. “We believe that ICX will provide a much-needed alternative in the Canadian equity marketplace,” added Cohen in the release.

Instinet is “leveraging its deep heritage in the electronic trading” space, commented Alex Goor, co-president at Instinet, in the release. “We expect the resulting increase in transaction speed at significantly lower cost to lead to greater trading volumes and a positive impact on market liquidity and transparency,” further stated Goor in the release.

ICX will be based on the same technology and pricing structure as Instinet’s soon-to-be-launched Chi-X Pan-European ATS. In October, Instinet announced that it’s building a new pan-European Multi-Lateral Trading Facility (MTF) under MiFID, dubbed Instinet Chi-X Limited, to begin trading later this year.

But Instinet isn’t the only developer of electronic marketplaces eyeing opportunities to the north. Liquidnet launched Canadian equity trading on Oct. 24. Canadian buy-side institutions joined with Liquidnet’s membership of about 400 members to create a new global marketplace for Canadian equity trading, the block trading marketplace said in its release.