Although "dark pools" and other off-exchange trading venues account for less than 10 per cent of overall European share trading, they have become the centre of an increasingly fractious debate around over-the-counter trading.

Dark pools are platforms where orders are matched but the prices not revealed beforehand. They have grown in popularity with institutional investors looking to get large orders done away from exchanges to avoid the risk that prices move against them. Credit Suisse’s Crossfinder dark pool is among the region’s largest, along with Citigroup’s Match and Goldman Sachs’s SigmaX venues.

The UK and City of London is broadly sympathetic to OTC trading but French regulators have argued it must be restricted to "complex transactions" that combine equities and derivatives. The MiFID review is considering banning dark pool trading for all orders which fall below an imposed threshold.

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