High Frequency Trading Triggers a Showdown Over a London Rooftop

For years, a drab building located just one mile past the skyscrapers of London’s Canary Wharf neighborhood has been the site of one of the fiercest battles in the world of high-frequency trading.

London Stock Exchange Group in 2023 moved the primary data center for its storied exchange business to the site. In order to allow traders to quickly transmit their bets between the iconic bourse and rivals like Intercontinental Exchange Inc., LSEG installed a radio on top of the data center that sends those trades moving at the speed of light.

London’s Docklands

Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

It was a seemingly innocuous move, ...