It follows the successful migration of these markets from the Nouveau Système de Cotation platform.

The European transfer to the Universal Trading Platform represents a key milestone in the new electronic trading platform's roll-out across NYSE Euronext cash and derivatives markets in Europe and the US.

In addition the Universal Trading Platform will offer access to the company's new European multi-trading facilities: NYSE Arca Europe and SmartPool.

Roland Bellegarde, group executive vice president and head of European execution for NYSE Euronext, says: 'We believe that our customers will immediately benefit from one single point of access to all our cash equities markets in Europe, thereby reducing costs and producing a dramatic increase in market efficiency. The introduction of the Universal Trading Platform is strategically important to our business, and gives us a significant competitive advantage in Europe, enabling us to meet the emerging needs of both existing and future customers.'

Anthony Attia, executive director and head of the Universal Trading Platform Programme, adds: 'The delivery of the second stage in the roll-out of the Universal Trading Platform demonstrates NYSE Euronext's commitment to continuous innovation in order to provide technology-driven efficiencies to our customers. They will benefit from the superior functionality, faster speed and much greater capacity of the Universal Trading Platform.'

The company says that customers trading on NYSE Euronext European cash markets will realise reduced latencies from 1.5 milliseconds per roundtrip on NSC to 150-400 microseconds per roundtrip on the Universal Trading Platform. The platform can handle 100,000 orders per second.

Following the successful migration of the European bond market in December 2008, this second phase of the company-wide implementation of the Universal Trading Platform will be followed by its deployment on NYSE Arca Europe, NYSE Euronext's new MTF which is set to launch in March 2009, and the NYSE Arca equities market in the US in the third quarter of this year.