Industry veteran and former Chi-X Europe chief executive Alasdair Haynes has founded a new trading venue that will compete head-on with the platform he used to run.

Aquis Exchange will begin trading in pan-European equities by the second quarter of next year, pending regulatory approval for a multilateral trading facility licence with the UK's Financial Services Authority. The company is privately owned and backed by a number of individual investors, including Haynes, who is chief executive.