Instinet, the agency broker owned by Japanese investment bank Nomura, is betting that it can profit from looming European trading rules by making sense of a new explosion of data.

In roughly three months’ time, the second iteration of Europe’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive will come into force. The rules will force asset managers to pay separately for investment research and executing trades. In theory brokers will be selected not for the quality of their research, but for their trading acumen alone — and trading is Instinet’s forte.