A Dutch court ruled that it was the duty of the country’s regulator, the Financial Markets Authority, to decide whether the firm should be allowed to join the rival exchange, not the judiciary.

“[This] means our MTF will finally be able to trade,” Willem Meijer, CEO of TOM, told FOi. “Liffe didn’t want this for two years.”

“Our MTF is a competitor, so we didn’t want to give much away. When we tried to become a broker member, Liffe said they had a responsibility to ensure the orderly running of their market, and so said they needed to know how our MTF would work. We couldn’t give them that,” Meijer said, so TOM’s membership was blocked.

“Our principal argument was that membership was for their market, not ours,” Meijer said. “The judge agreed.”

In response, a Liffe spokesperson in Amsterdam would only say: “We want to protect the integrity of our markets and we fully intend to use all routes open to us to do so.”

Meijer added that he hoped the move would be the first step in introducing what he called much needed competition in the European options market, which last year suffered its fourth straight year of cumulative decline by volume.

“We are preparing the last phase of our MTF,” Meijer revealed. “Optiver are already a member. So are ABN,” he added – though he stressed the two shareholders would be treated neutrally as ordinary broker members. He added that it was not likely Binckbank would take up full membership of the options market.

ABN Amro took a 25% stake in TOM last summer.