Next up in our introduction to the distinguished nominees for Leaders in Trading 2023 Editors’ Choice Awards, we bring you the shortlist for Outstanding Fixed Income Trading Venue – one of most anticipated awards for the fixed income community.
Over the last year, the fixed income landscape has continued to shift as electronification takes hold and central to much of this innovation are the venues
Among the key players in this competitive landscape, The TRADE has selected Bloomberg, Euronext MTS Markets, MarketAxess and Tradeweb for our 2023 shortlist, following various individual achievements by these venues over the past year.
Bloomberg
Bloomberg has had a busy year, with several new initiatives, enhancements to existing technology, as well as M&A activity – leading to the trading venue being featured in this award category again following a nomination last year. At the top of the year, Bloomberg launched ETF list trading via its ETF request for quote service (RFQe), enhancing existing functionality to allow clients to trade multiple securities with a single click. The new functionality allows clients to compare quotes from multiple sources to ensure they are trading at the best available price. Elsewhere, Bloomberg expanded the anonymous liquidity discovery capabilities of its all-to-all platform, Bloomberg Bridge, earlier this month in a bid to help buy-side users reduce information leakage.
Euronext, MTS Markets
Following quite an impactful year, Euronext, MTS Markets joins this year’s roster for Outstanding Fixed Income Trading Venue. MTS is a wholesale and institutional fixed income trading platform focused on the European market. For over 35 years, MTS has supported the European fixed income market through fully regulated electronic markets in Europe and beyond, bringing traders together to unlock liquidity, maximise trading opportunities, and optimise post-trade processes.
The trading venue joined forces with fintech Wematch in February to launch MTS Swaps, an interdealer web-based trading platform for the interest rate swaps market. Interest rate swaps are expected to be extended to MTS BondVision, Euronext’s regulated multi-dealer-to-client trading platform – allowing existing clients to trade bonds, repo and swaps within the BondVision franchise. This will also inject competition into a market that has been dominated by the incumbent platforms, Euronext MTS told The TRADE. Following the selection as a recognised platform by the EU in September, MTS has launched MTS EU where members of the EU primary dealer network will carry out market making activity on securities issued by the European Union.
MarketAxess
MarketAxess makes the shortlist for this year’s Outstanding Fixed Income Trading Venue following a busy year of product launches and enhancements as well as M&A activity. Alongside fellow nominees for the category – Bloomberg and Tradeweb – the venue signed a joint venture agreement in May to become the fixed income consolidated tape provider (CTP) in the EU, subject to regulatory approvals. The three venues confirmed plans to apply to become the tape provider in June last year via a public procurement process organised by ESMA and have selected FINBOURNE as their infrastructure provider to build and operate the CT for the joint venture company. Elsewhere, MarketAxess expanded its integration with the Investortool platform in June for its municipal bond activity. Following this, MarketAxess’ offerings are now displayed on the Investortools Dealer Network (IDN) as it seeks to expand its electronic municipal trading. Through the IDN software and Investortool’s straight-through-processing, asset managers have direct click-to-bid and click-to-trade access to liquidity.
Central to MarketAxess’ merger and acquisition activity in 2023 was its announcement in August that it is set to acquire multi-asset algorithmic trading provider, Pragma, for an undisclosed sum at the end of the year, subject to closing conditions. This development followed the first client algorithmic trade in US credit on MarketAxess’ multi-protocol automated execution solution Adaptive Auto-X announced in June.
Tradeweb
Tradeweb makes another appearance in this year’s award category following a nomination at last year’s Leaders in Trading award ceremony. The trading venue has continued to service fixed income markets with the introduction of various product launches to bolster workflows. BlackRock entered a multi-year partnership with Tradeweb to integrate the latter’s credit trading solutions and data into BlackRock’s order management system, Aladdin. The partnership intends to deliver a “unique trading experience” between BlackRock and Tradeweb, focused on corporate, municipal, and emerging markets bonds. Tradeweb also launched a new market data service in February to calculate real-time iNAVs for ETFs, with BlackRock becoming the first issuer to use the service for its iShares ETF suite in Europe. In April, Tradeweb became the first electronic trading platform to deploy the RFM protocol to facilitate a fully electronic single name CDS trade.
Elsewhere, Tradeweb and FTSE Russell set out plans in April to collaborate over benchmark closing prices for European government bonds, calculated in accordance with the EU benchmark regulation. In the same month, Tradeweb collaborated with Euroclear and Informa Global Markets to automate the security identification and setup process in the primary market, improving the way investors access and manage critical pre-pricing data for newly-syndicated Eurobonds. Tradeweb closed its A$125 million acquisition of government bond and interest rate derivatives trading platform, Yieldbroker, in August following a regulatory review. The businesses stated that the move was set to leverage both firms’ extensive industry experience and innovative trading solutions in order to contribute to a more liquid, transparent and efficient fixed income market.