BlackRock and Bloomberg have announced the industry’s first consolidated view for European iShares ETFs, designed to reduce market fragmentation and improve liquidity and transparency.

Leland Clemons, Head of iShares Capital Markets in EMEA, said: “This unique view of ETF volumes will bring added transparency to investors across Europe.”

A consolidated view lets investors see the most competitive bid/offer prices and the locations of best liquidity. The comprehensive picture is created by Bloomberg, using its European Composite tickers, which aggregate volume and trading data for reported over-the-counter and exchange traded iShares ETFs. This includes data from 22 venues in Europe where ETFs are traded.

For example, the iShares FTSE 100 is currently traded in sterling on five European exchanges and in euros on four European exchanges. To determine the overall volumes traded, an investor previously needed to look up five different tickers to arrive at a sterling total and four different tickers for a euro total.

Now, this total volume can be viewed on one consolidated ticker for sterling and one consolidated ticker for euro. Over the entire iShares product range, this means that investors can now use just 517 tickers to view volumes that were previously spread over 1385 tickers, gaining a snapshot on total liquidity more efficiently.

Commenting on the development, Leland Clemons, Head of iShares Capital Markets in EMEA, said: “This unique view of ETF volumes will bring added transparency to investors across Europe. iShares is committed to working with our partners to improve the investor experience in this marketplace and initiating these types of advances for the benefit of our clients.”

Jean-Paul Zammitt, Bloomberg’s Global Head of Core Product , added: “Industry players have long called for the creation of a consolidated tape. We’re pleased to work with iShares to create the first composite view of the European ETF marketplace.”