Turquoise, the share trading platform, has cut “a small number” of staff in the first sign that weak equity trading volume is forcing smaller equities trading facilities to cut staffing costs.

Eli Lederman, chief executive, said market volumes were “very low and we had excess capacity”. The redundancies were made three weeks ago. Like its rivals, Turquoise was launched with about 30 staff. Mr Lederman declined to say how many of the workforce had been cut.