The Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX) will attempt to attract volume and new international trading members through its latest move, cross trading, said exchange CEO William Woods.

Cross trading, or crossing, which commenced on October 24, is a securities transaction where one trading member handles both sides of the trade.

To attract volume and new trading members, the BSX has put in place an "attractive'' and "competitive'' fee schedule giving it an advantage over other markets, primarily London, Mr. Woods said.

London charges 64 cents per cross trade per side, or $1.64 total. The BSX charges 50 cents per cross trade, with a minimum of $5 and a maximum, for a basket of stocks, of $50.

For Wednesday's BSX cross trade, which included 492 stocks in a basket, the BSX charged $50. That same trade in London would have carried a $738 fee, because London has no maximum, said Mr. Woods.

BSX crossings, as of Wednesday, totaled over ten million US stocks worth $509.3 million. Nomura Securities (Bermuda) Ltd., currently the only international BSX trading member, has been involved with all BSX cross trades so far. Nomura Securities (Bermuda) is owned by Nomura Holdings America Inc., the North American holding company for Tokyo's Nomura Securities Company Ltd., the world's largest securities firm.

Fee income is obviously not, at least initially, the exchange's motivation for offering cross trading.

Crossings worth over half a billion dollars have, through Wednesday, only generated $300 for the BSX.

But the facility is just one part of creating an international offshore exchange, Mr. Woods agreed.

"The new crossings facility enables trading member firms to execute programme trades on the BSX. Some of these trades are in US listed stocks which are crossed outside New York trading hours,'' Mr. Woods added.

Programme trading is computer driven buying or selling of baskets of stocks by index arbitrage specialists or institutional investors.

Mr. Woods also said that Bermuda's time zone gives the BSX an advantage, as it opens ahead of the New York and closes after it, when the London market has already closed.

A crossing may include international securities which are not listed or approved for listing on the BSX, as long as the trading member has both sides of the trade, and crossings may be made at any time on the BSX.

Cross trading is attractive to big institutional investors, like investment banks and fund managers.

An institutional investor looking to adjust its S&P 500 position could place 500 orders for each company or do it in a basket and avoid offering it on the New York Stock Exchange floor where specialists may break up the basket.