A number of Europe’s largest equity houses are understood to be reviewing the role of their program trading desks, as the continuing slump in revenues forces banks to restructure their businesses.

In most bulge-bracket banks, program trading sits alongside sales trading and electronic trading franchises as a means of executing client order flow. Program desks specialise in trading portfolios of stocks for a single commission, and are often used to help rebalance funds or switch portfolios from one manager to another. However, banks are understood to be consolidating their execution functions, often combining program trading and electronic trading.