On Tuesday, Jiway said that it had signed letters of intent with 30 brokers in the UK, Sweden and Germany who plan to use its platform to offer clients access to securities listed on the New York, Nasdaq, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Amsterdam and Stockholm stock exchanges. The facilities will be made available to brokers in the UK, Sweden and Germany at first, followed by brokers in France, Switzerland, Holland and Italy during 2001.

Brokers which have signed up include Commerzbank, UBS Warburg, Self Trade, D Carnegie, Aktiedirekt, Nordiska Fondkommission and SkandiaBanken.

Brokers will pay one flat fee of just 7 euros ($6) per order for trading, clearing and settlement of cross-border trades up to 50,000 euros. There will be no annual membership or other fixed charges.

The very significant feature of Jiway as compared with most other 'ecns' is that users will have access to a large pool of liquidity for European online trading through Jiway's designated marketmakers. Liquidity is the key to the future development of global securities markets. It is all that stands between the legacy exchanges and the abyss - once people (brokers or private investors) think that they can access adequate liquidity through market-maker participants in an ecn, that will be the end for the national fixed-base exchanges such as the LSE.

Per Swensson, chief executive of Jiway, said: "There is huge potential growth in the private investor market for cross-border equity trading. Jiway's solution for brokers and their customers is the catalyst that will help stimulate this latent growth and simultaneously encourage the development of internet brokerage."

He added: "By signing letters of intent, the brokers are sharing our vision and confidence in the future of retail cross-border trading. Our philosophy is clear: the exchange will provide the broadest array of cross-border trading services for brokers and retail investors at the lowest prices ever."

In a parallel move, Jiway Broker Services, announced on Monday that it was launching a pan-European back office service that it claims will greatly reduce the costs of setting up online brokerages.

To be known somewhat clumsily as "Back Office For Hire" (perhaps it sounds good in Swedish?) the platform will provide post-trade facilities for equities and other securities including clearing, settlement and safekeeping activities as well as regulatory reporting and administration. It will also offer brokerages a uniform interface for their online services across Europe so they do not have to design separate systems for each country despite differing settlement rules.

OM has offered unbranded back office services in Sweden and Norway for several years but until now it has not attempted to operate these services more widely. The first user will be Swedish online brokerage Avanza when it launches its retail brokerage service in Germany this November.

Per Nordlander, chief executive of Avanza, said the service removed the long and expensive process of establishing partnerships in each European country. "The agreement will provide us with a great efficiency advantage over those of our competitors that have acquired local brokers or contacted local suppliers when expanding into new countries," he said.