Instinet, the agency broker, has received regulatory approval to use a consolidated European best bid and offer as the reference price for its non-displayed or 'dark' alternative trading facility BlockMatch, in an important development for the European trading industry.

Currently, dark multilateral trading platforms use the pricing of a security's listing exchange as a reference when determining quotes. However, this provides an increasingly incomplete snapshot, as upwards of 30 percent of many securities' turnover trades on alternative trading venues.