Aquis Exchange grew average daily volume (ADV) on its pan-European multilateral trading facility (MTF) by 33% in 2025, from €2.11 billion to €2.79 billion, and lifted its share of European trading from 5.1% to 5.71% in the second half. Growth was strongest in the alternative mechanisms that now define its franchise. Its periodic auction book, Aquis on Demand, more than tripled in size, and its Market at Close service and dark pool both posted double-digit gains.
It did all of this in the year it became part of SIX, with the Swiss group completing its acquisition of Aquis in July 2025. The Aquis MTF has continued to run independently, with its own sales and client teams.
Periodic auctions were the standout. Aquis on Demand ADV rose from €160 million in 2024 to €577 million in the second half of 2025, a 261% increase. Its share of the European periodic auction market climbed from 6.2% to 11.4%. Crucially, the growth came from genuine multilateral interaction rather than members crossing with themselves. The self-match rate, which measures how often a member’s buy and sell orders meet each other, fell from 47% to 11%.
We are committed to listening to our members and continually innovating our technology and fee structures to ensure they achieve superior execution outcomes
Thomas Downes
“Periodic auctions protect members through randomised timing, and they deliver further value when participants optimise across all order types,” says Thomas Downes, head of markets, who joined Aquis in August 2025. “We are committed to listening to our members and continually innovating our technology and fee structures to ensure they achieve superior execution outcomes.”
Aquis sharpened the product as it grew. It introduced an accept-or-cancel order type designed to make members’ smart order routers more efficient, alongside near-touch pegging to maximise spread capture.
The Market at Close is Aquis’s alternative to the primary exchanges’ closing auctions and offers close-price execution at a fraction of the cost. Its ADV rose 22% year-on-year to €769 million, while the imbalance liquidity available in the book rose 35% to €836 million.
In dark trading, second-half ADV on Aquis Markets Pool reached €524 million, 64% above the 2024 level, and Aquis’s share of European dark trading reached 10.2%. Aquis is also developing Aquis VWAP Match, a non-displayed book in which members can cross conditional orders at the five-minute volume-weighted average price, with the option to interact only with other client-facilitation flow.
Growth did not come at the expense of quality. A standard proxy for market impact is how often the European best bid and offer moves within 100 milliseconds of an execution. Across its lit, dark and periodic books, Aquis averages 28%, against 34% to 66% for other venues. That makes it the lowest impact venue on average in Europe.
Behind the numbers sits a more data-led commercial model: 2025 was the first full year in which Aquis’s quant team was embedded across client coverage. The team produced conditional scorecards and analysed members’ minimum execution sizes to show where liquidity was being missed. The firm also launched Aquis Data Analytics, with two quant products covering trading imbalances and concentration, and built a Metric Warehouse that automates more than 20 metrics for clients.
The technology underpinning the platform is Aquis’s own. In 2025, it delivered 100% trading availability with median latency of 11 microseconds. It is set to become the trading platform for SIX and BME equity markets, the strongest possible endorsement a technology vendor can receive. Headcount rose from 88 to 117 during the year, mostly in software engineering.
Clients wanted reassurance that the acquisition would not blunt Aquis’s edge. “When I joined Aquis, members frequently asked if we could remain an independent, disruptive force in the market,” says Downes. “Today, it is clear that the vital role we play in this ecosystem, along with our unique culture, is deeply valued, validating our mission and our future.”
That is why Aquis wins. In a year of ownership change, it grew volume by a third, nearly doubled its share of periodic auctions, broadened its dark and closing liquidity, and kept the lowest market impact in Europe. Throughout, it remained the challenger its members asked it to be.
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