(April 2): SIX Group AG, the operator of the Swiss and Spanish bourses, is weighing a switch to the trading technology of Aquis Exchange plc, a smaller UK exchange it is in the process of acquiring.

The group has been studying whether Aquis’s matching engine — the software component that pairs orders and processes transactions — can support trading in Swiss and Spanish stocks before the acquisition is expected to close this quarter, SIX chief executive officer Bjørn Sibbern, said in an interview.

“With one connection you get access to the Spanish exchange, the Swiss exchange and Aquis’s 16 markets,” said Sibbern, who took over the reins of the group at the start of the year. “That gives us an opportunity to look at what can we do in the future in terms of a pan-European listing venue.”

SIX announced a £194 million (RM1.11 billion) bid for Aquis in November when Sibbern was serving as global head of exchanges at the Zurich-based group. 

The design review and planned takeover follow an earlier search for a commercial partner to supply the technology, Sibbern said. The considerations weren’t related to the outages experienced in 2023 and 2024 at the Zurich bourse, but rather to consolidate trading across markets, a SIX representative said in response to follow-up questions.

Founded in 2012, Aquis operates a pan-European multilateral trading facility for cash equities which covers a collective 16 European markets. It also operates the Aquis Stock Exchange in the UK, while other businesses include licensing of proprietary market infrastructure technologies and market data.

The British firm saw more than £50 billion traded on its venues in February — largely through its pan-European multilateral trading facility — compared to around 135 billion Swiss francs (RM677.76 billion) worth of securities traded across SIX’s exchanges, according to company data.

The efforts come as SIX is looking to bolster its business.

The exchange wants to improve its margin profile from 28% in 2024 to above 40% in 2027, it said last month. It also plans to reduce its cost base by more than 120 million francs by the end of 2027. That may include a reduction of around 150 positions by year-end 2025 from a workforce of about 4,400 people. 

SIX is conducting a review of its operations and may exit certain products or services within its four business lines — exchanges, securities services, financial information and banking services — in order to reallocate capital to higher-growth drivers, Sibbern said.

“It could be that we, for historical reasons, have one service or one functionality, one product that doesn’t really have nice revenue or does not add strategic value,” he said.

The group is also open to further acquisitions that can complement its business, for example, in financial data, Sibbern said. “I think we are looking at it broad,” he said. “But the deals we do will be within the four business areas.”

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