Singapore Exchange to launch new trading engine in Aug

SINGAPORE Jan 19 (Reuters) - Singapore Exchange (SGX) , Asia's second-largest listed bourse operator, said on Wednesday it will launch the world's fastest trading engine, called SGX Reach, on Aug 15 as it tries to compete with rivals.

SGX said last year that it would invest S$250 million ($195 million) for the new trading infrastructure that will enable overseas customers to trade through the bourse at a lower cost.

"In addition to its benchmarked order response time of 90 microseconds 'door-to-door', Reach can handle 1 million order book changes per second per partition, 100 times the capacity of the existing engine," SGX said in a statement.

SGX on Tuesday reported a 14 percent rise in its October-December profit, missing expectations, and said it was on track to complete a $7.8 billion takeover of Australian bourse operator ASX . ($1 = 1.283 Singapore Dollars) (Reporting by Harry Suhartono; Editing by Dhara Ranasinghe)