Executing trades as fast as possible has its attractions for the traditional asset management community, but few have plans to engage in the technological arms race themselves. Although they rely on their brokers to access the markets, reducing latency is often lower on their list of priorities than the quality of execution.

Nonetheless, latency has dominated the headlines not least because of growing armies of high- frequency traders, which quickly move in and out of markets in thousandths or millionths of a second. They account for 60% of the US market and are making their presence felt in Europe, representing about 40% of total trading volume, according to industry estimates.