BATS Trading will pick Savvis, a Nasdaq-listed data networking company, to “host” the equities trading platform that it plans to launch in Europe this autumn as it takes advantage of European Union rules aimed at liberalising securities trading across the region.

The move is among the first practical steps that BATS has taken to establish a foothold in the European market for stock trading, where it hopes its ultra-fast trading system will help it attract order flow away from established exchanges and from a growing community of algorithmic traders.