Market volatility may be causing havoc for investors, but it has been kind to the London Stock Exchange, which posted a record number of trades in January.

In the 11 months to February, the bourse's average daily trades rose 86% to 629,000 - hitting 913,000 in January - with an average daily value up 43% to £9 billion.

The LSE said a combination of new-technology platform TradElect, brought in June, and growth in high-frequency trading strategies by investors helped drive up volumes.

Italy's Borsa Italiana, part of the LSE group since October, increased trades by 23% to an average of 288,000 a day with a value up 30% to €6.2 billion (£4.8 billion).

However, the harsher economic conditions took their toll on new listings, with 365 added on the London markets compared with 470 the year before. Of those, 114 were on the main market and 251 on AIM.

The LSE snared 84 international initial public offerings, down slightly from last year but more than NYSE-Euronext and Nasdaq together. There were 31 new listings in Italy.

LSE chief executive Clara Furse said "high levels of market volatility, the notable shift to high-frequency trading strategies and the substantially improved speed and execution certainty provided by TradElect" had underpinned hopes for a strong year, which ends next Monday.

Furse said integration with Borsa Italiana was going well, and she expected further growth in the coming year. The LSE has added 15,000 customers for its professional terminals receiving LSE real-time data since February 2007, with 4000 more this year alone.

Professional users of Borsa Italiana data were up 13,000 at 158,000.