Aquis Exchange a proposed pan European stock exchange will locate its primary data center at the Equinix LD4 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in the colos giant London Slough campus.
Aquis will launch pending approval by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The company said it aims to revolutionise the European trading landscape and increase competition by introducing tiered subscription-based pricing and innovative order  Equinix describes its Slough campus as having access to 30 European markets and 80 exchanges and trading platforms. 
Equinix Slough houses equity platforms, FX platforms, dark pools, commodities, and derivative products with 25 per cent of total European equities trade count originating in Slough the firm said. Alasdair Haynes, former Chi-X Europe chief executive and CEO of Aquis Exchange said: "Equinix offered us a good value proposition. John Knuff, general manager, Equinix GM for global financial services, said: Exchanges such as Aquis, are reacting to the demands of the trading community by driving down access and infrastructure costs.” 

Aquis Exchange has applied for regulatory approval as a multilateral trading facility from the UK FCA. It was established in October 2012 and will operate a pan-European equities trading exchange and develop exchange software.  Aquis Exchange’s subscription pricing works on a similar model to that of the telecoms industry and is designed to encourage participation from all categories of professional trading firm. Users will be charged according to the message traffic they generate, rather than a percentage of the value of each stock that they trade. There will be different pricing bands to accommodate varying degrees of usage. There will be a very low usage band for small firms, that are traditionally disadvantaged by the pricing structure of the incumbent exchanges and, at the other end of the pricing structure, will be the top category where usage is unlimited (subject to a fair usage policy).

Currently, over 90% of European equity trading in each individual country takes place on two exchanges. The aim of Aquis Exchange is to bring fresh competition into the marketplace in order to lower the trading costs maintained by the existing duopoly. 

How Equinix addresses the capital markets.