Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Having focused on integration over the past two years, the US bank is now making a push in equities and beginning to make a name for itself in electronic trading.

Goldman Sachs: A winner of this category in 2008, Goldman Sachs continues to hire some of the best IT brains to retain its pre-eminent position.

Knight Capital: The broker has invested heavily to build a European presence to complement its position in the US and the fruits of its labour are beginning to show.

Morgan Stanley: This historically strong trading house remains one of the first names on traders’ lips when it comes to electronic execution and continues to be forward-thinking when it comes to shifts in market structure.

Nomura: The Japanese bank has received praise for its rebuilding of Lehman Brothers’ European equities franchise and it continues to be at the forefront of innovation.

BlackRock: The asset manager has always prided itself on the strength of its IT and its risk and investment platforms continue to be in high demand from third parties.

Fidelity: The firm has been a leader among its peers for the strength of its IT systems and it has continued to develop the business globally.

IMC: The Dutch high-frequency trading and asset management firm is one of the most secretive firms of its class, but its technology is among the most highly regarded.

Marshall Wace: The hedge fund continues to prove itself as one of the pre-eminent trading firms of its class with some of the best brains on the block.

Winton Capital Management: The London-based hedge fund is rumoured to be planning an initial public offering as it seeks to build on the success of its computer-driven trading strategies.

Fidessa: The technology provider continues to rack up sellside clients with its flagship platform that combines multi asset-class order management and algorithmic trading services.

FlexTrade:  The firm is at the forefront of the new breed of sellside trading systems and is driven by a focus to provide what traders want.

Portware: The trading system specialist has established itself as a market leader over the past five years.

Thomson Reuters Eikon: The data giant launched Eikon to much fanfare last year, billing it as a next-generation desktop combining market information, social networking, news, analytics and trading tools.

Ullink. The US-based firm’s UL SMART solution makes decisions using real-time data from multiple sources and routes orders according to user-defined best-execution policies.

360T:  The German trading technology provider offers one of the industry’s most advanced multi-product trading platforms for foreign exchange, money market and interest rate derivative instruments with a growing customer base in the institutional market.

Charles River Development: The order management system provider handles all the front office requirements for the buyside trader.

Fidessa: The company has become a major provider of order management systems to the buy side since it moved into the space in 2007.

ITG Allocator: The agency broker has recently made its Allocator system available in Europe, allowing buyside traders to manage liquidity aggregation across all available non-displayed trading venues.

TradingScreen: TradingScreen’s multi-broker, multi asset-class execution management solution is tailored for the traditional asset management community.

Citadel Execution Services: The European marketmaking division of Citadel and one of the backers of trading platform Equiduct, is gaining ground in Europe and developing a retail broker execution business.

Derwent Capital Markets: The start-up social media hedge fund is using unstructured sentiment data from the social networking site Twitter to drive its trading strategy.

Getco: The trading firm has had its troubles over the past year, including a fine from the Financial Services Authority in April 2010, but the pioneering marketmaker continues to define and redefine the high frequency trading space.

IMC: A founding member of a new European proprietary trading lobby group, the Dutch marketmaker has gone from strength to strength, posting record revenues for 2010.

Knight Capital: The other backer of Equiduct, Knight Capital has introduced a number of innovative offerings during the past two years, including its dark pool and new algo suite.

Chi-X Europe: The future of the exchange, which has agreed to a takeover by Bats Europe, remains uncertain, but the platform achieved full-year profitability in 2010 and continues to be Europe’s largest pan-European market.

Deutsche Börse: The German exchange surprised market-watchers when it emerged as the dominant partner in a landmark tie-up with NYSE Euronext that is set to transform Europe.

Equiduct: The Citadel and Knight-backed trading platform’s innovative retail-focused model has seen volumes surge during the past 10 months.

London Stock Exchange: The LSE is smarting from its failed merger with TMX Group but its full year results for 2010 show chief executive Xavier Rolet’s strategy to diversify the company is paying off.

Turquoise: The pan-European trading platform has started to gain market share on both the lit and dark markets, has undergone a major technology overhaul, and is bringing competition to the listed derivatives market.

Chi-Delta: After losing its crown as the number-one dark pool in Europe last summer, Chi-Delta is back on top, reclaiming the number-one spot between October last year and the time of writing.

Knight Link: Knight Capital’s innovative model for allowing both retail and institutional order flow to interact with the broker’s own liquidity is gaining ground and recognition.

Nomura NX: The first bank-owned dark pool to register as a multilateral dark trading venue, Nomura NX is going from strength to strength, gaining considerable market share in some indices.

SmartPool: The NYSE-Euronext-owned dark pool has done a good job of putting itself on the European map during the past year.

Turquoise: After ascending to the number one spot last summer, Turquoise’s dark pool has settled into the number-two position at the time of writing among Europe’s non-displayed order books.

Credit Suisse, Pathfinder: The pioneering electronic trading house continues to develop its flagship smart order routing product.

Deutsche Bank, Stealth: Part of the German giant’s powerful Autobahn stable of equities products, Stealth is a liquidity-seeking algorithm which uses advanced high frequency trading models.

Knight Capital, FAN: Knight’s smart order execution algorithm uses “order awareness” to gather feedback on how multiple orders are responding to market conditions in real time.

PE Lynch, QTT: The Swiss firm’s QTT algorithmic trading strategies accommodate a wide spectrum of order flow.

Progress Apama, Capital Markets Platform: Highly regarded in the industry, the Apama algo suite enables the creation of automated strategies for unique trading techniques.

CME Clearing Europe: The Chicago’s giant’s clearing division arrived in Europe this year clearing more than 150 over-the-counter energy and commodity derivatives, and is set to roll out interest rate swap clearing later this year.

DTCC’s EuroCCP: The US-owned clearer has been at the forefront of efforts to bring competition to Europe, and has picked up some key new clients during the past year.

Eurex Clearing: The formidable Deutsche Börse-owned clearing house is rolling out a number of new products in response to the shifting regulatory environment, and is expanding its traditional client-base to include buyside firms.

ICE Clear Europe: The company remains Europe’s star new derivatives clearer, but a European Commission anti-trust probe into the clearing house’s tariff structure could damage the company’s reputation.

SIX x-clear: The SIX Group-owned clearer has also played a key role in making interoperability a reality and has picked up new clients during the past year.

Bats Preferred Clearing: The new service represents the long-awaited fruition of the clearing interoperability project, which will bring competition to Europe’s clearing landscape by providing users with a choice of clearer.

CME Clearing Europe OTC commodity clearing: The Chicago’s giant's Europe division began clearing more than 150 OTC energy and commodity derivatives in May.

ICE Europe A=C CDS clearing: In conjunction with the interdealer-broker community, the transatlantic clearing house’s new service has reduced credit default swap clearing time from a week to a day.

LCH.Clearnet and Chi-X Europe ccCFD:  The two companies marked a world first earlier this year when they introduced a central counterparty clearing service for contracts for difference.

Omgeo Central Trade Manager and EuroCCP: The new service provides matching and central clearing of pan-European equities trades between a hedge fund and its executing broker, bringing the central clearing model to this OTC space.

Algo Technologies: This UK-based start-up is still trying to establish itself but it offers some of the fastest technology around for networking and data feeds.

Corvil CorvilNet: Corvil has become an increasingly prominent provider of latency management software, providing much-needed transparency around industry trading speeds within a billionth of a second.

Fixnetix iX-eCute: The UK-based trading technology company is pushing the boundaries with its iX-eCute field programmable gate array technology that is taking trading into the realm of nano-seconds.

Nomura NXT Direct: Nomura broke the mould when it launched its direct market access platform this year, not only for its microsecond-speed but for its innovative multi risk-checking features.

NovaSparks Gen2: The hardware chip processing firm came to market this year with its innovative field programmable gate array technology, one of the most-cutting edge technologies available for super-fast trading.

Icap’s i-Swap: Icap’s i-Swap platform combines voice and electronic broking with committed marketmakers in a hybrid model that now accounts for 30% of all Icap’s euro interest rate swap transactions.

Plus Markets: The exchange’s strategic overhaul has seen it replace its technology platform and launch a new derivatives exchange with an innovative new swap index contract.

The Order Machine: The Optiver-backed options platform is taking the fight to NYSE Liffe with a handful of single stock Dutch equity options.

Tradition Trad-X: Tradition’s Trad-X platform represents an effort to exploit regulatory changes and bring electronic execution to the swap market by providing hybrid trading in euro interest rates swaps with committed marketmakers.

Turquoise Derivatives: The London Stock Exchange-owned market was the first to bring competition to the European listed derivatives market with its launch of FTSE 100 futures, taking Turquoise head to head with NYSE Liffe.

Bloomberg: The Bloomberg feed is the premier source of market data. The data provider is also working with the European Federation of Securities Exchanges, among others, to build a framework for a trading tape of record.

Interactive Data: Interactive Data experienced some problems during the London Stock Exchange’s migration earlier this year, but continues to be the premier provider of fixed-income evaluations, reference data, real-time market data and analytics.

Markit: The company is the definitive provider of credit and credit default swap data, but a European Commission anti-trust probe could threaten its position.

QuantHouse: In just six years, the French trading technology company has set the standard for super-fast market data.

Thomson Reuters: Thomson Reuters also experienced problems during the LSE migration but has significantly enhanced its Elektron data suite during the past year, and is also working with FESE to build a framework for a trading tape of record.

Algorithmics Algo Collateral: Algorithmics’ collateral management offering sets the standard for collateral management, remaining at the cutting edge of this increasingly critical part of the industry.

DTCC Data Repositories: The DTCC has led the market globally as a provider of trade repositories, launching the equity derivatives repository in the second half of last year to provide visibility on the OTC market.

Eurex Client Asset Protection: The Deutsche-Börse-owned clearing house’s new service allows non-clearing member buyside end-users to choose the level of asset protection they require at the clearing house.

Markit MarkitServ: MarkitServ remains a major provider of post-trade services to the OTC derivatives market, providing trade confirmation, allocation and portfolio reconciliation, among other key risk-mitigating services.

Traiana Harmony CreditLink: The launch of the new version of Harmony CreditLink allows FX prime brokers to monitor client credit risk and suspend client trading across multiple FX platforms in real time.

Icap BrokerTec: The interdealer-broker system continues to be the most liquid for several fixed-income products, with volumes on the platform up in recent months.

London Stock Exchange MTS: The multi-dealer-to-client electronic market for trading bonds, owned by the LSE, is working on several new products, including a wholesale corporate bond market.

MarketAxess: Last year’s winner remains a major player and average volumes on the trading platform have grown during the past six months.

Tradeweb: The well-established trading platform pushed into single-name and index options for institutional customers in September, and continues to be a vocal proponent of derivatives clearing competition.

Vega-Chi: The fledgling convertible bond multilateral trading facility is gaining traction and is on track to roll out a new European high-yield bond order book in the coming weeks.

360T: The multi-bank platform enables trading in a wide range of foreign exchange and money market products including FX options and FX limit orders, and is rising up the rankings.

Deutsche Bank Autobahn FX: Deutsche Bank’s long-established Autobahn continues to dominate the bank-to-client FX market.

FXall: The company continues to be the leading multi-dealer FX platform, and played a key role in representing the industry during recent regulatory hearings on the FX swap market.

Icap EBS: Icap’s EBS remains the premier dealer-to-dealer FX trading platform, and last month the company completed the first non-deliverable foreign-exchange swap trade on the platform.

Thomson Reuters RTFX: Reuters Trading for foreign exchange continues to be a major player in the FX market, providing access to multiple marketmakers through a single point of access.

Mark Butterfield, CIO EMEA, Middle East and Africa, Nomura: It has been two years of blood, sweat and tears for Butterfield and his team with the bank’s integration of the old Lehman systems and a refresh of its underlying infrastructure.

Tony Harrop, CTO, Plus Markets: The intrepid CTO has overhauled the troubled London exchange’s technology, ripping out its old trading system in just a few months.

Paul O’Donnell, COO, Bats Europe: It has been a tough few months for the Bats Europe COO as the platform has begun negotiating the integration with Chi-X Europe, but Bats remains known for its cutting-edge technology and expertise.

David Rutter, CEO, Icap Electronic Broking: Rutter has invested significantly in the Icap Electronic Broking franchise during the past year.

Antoine Shagoury, CIO, London Stock Exchange: It has been a tough year for Shagoury, but the CIO has prevailed with the LSE’s technology overhaul.

Alasdair Haynes, CEO, Chi-X Europe: The well-known chief executive continues to drive the debate regarding the future structure of the European trading landscape.

Alexander Justham, Director of Markets, UK Financial Services Authority: The highly regarded Justham has played a pivotal role in maintaining a constructive industry-regulator dialogue throughout a period of intense regulatory change in the UK and Europe.

Christian Katz, CEO, SIX Swiss Exchange: The exchange chief has become a visible and vocal representative of the European exchange community in recent years.

Kristian West, CEO, JP Morgan Asset Management: West has played a crucial role in representing the often reticent buyside during the debate on the Mifid review.

Mark Yallop, COO, Icap: The outgoing chief operating officer of Icap has proved a visionary in the over-the-counter derivatives market and has helped secure Icap’s long-term position as the world’s premier interdealer-broker.

Diana Chan, CEO, EuroCCP: The clearing house chief executive continues to be a key advocate of clearing interoperability and competition.

Sally Dewar, Managing Director, JP Morgan: The former head of risk at the UK Financial Services authority secured a much-coveted seat on the steering committee of Europe’s super-regulator, the European Securities and Markets Association.

Judith Hardt, Secretary General, Federation of European Securities Exchanges: Hardt is working to help the exchange community embrace opportunities arising from regulatory change.

Tina Hasenpusch, Head of Business Development, CME Clearing Europe: Hasenpusch is a key architect of the CME Group’s push into Europe.

Eleanor Jenkins, Executive Director EU Market Structure, Morgan Stanley: A rising star of Europe’s market structure debate, Jenkins continues to represent the broker dealer community within the broader Mifid debate.

Bats Preferred Clearing: Bats’ new clearing service, which will bring long-awaited competition to Europe’s clearing landscape, is regarded by some as one of the most important market developments in recent years.

FIX Latency Working Group: The industry body is creating the first industry standards for measuring trading speeds, casting much-needed light on this opaque issue. 

Icap’s i-Swap: i-Swap represents a pioneering effort to bring the world of on-exchange trading and the over-the-counter derivatives markets together.

Liquidnet and SIX Swiss Exchange tie-up: The innovative tie-up between Europe’s premier institutional block trading platform and the Swiss Exchange marks a turning-point in the shape of competition in the European trading landscape.

PLUS Markets Swap Index Contract: This innovative contract allows a wider group of participants to manage their interest rate exposure and is one of the first centrally-cleared, on-exchange alternatives to traditional OTC swap trading models.