trueEX is seeking legal action against Markit for anti-competitive reasons following a decision to terminate access to its trade processing service, MarkitSERV.
The US interest rate swaps trading venue currently provides execution, matching, direct clearing, reporting and straight-through processing ‘drop copy’ connectivity to MarkitSERV.
However, trueEX claims Markit is no longer willing to accept a ‘drop copy’ and has ended the relationship after several years.
In an open letter written to clients, CEO at trueEX, Sunil Hirani, described Markit’s decision as “unilateral and only being to trueEX.”
He added trueEX believes Markit is looking to interact with the exchange the same way as it does with voice broker IDBs, so it would be able to exclusively perform matching, clearing and other processes of transactions.
“This change requires trueEX to insert Markit in the 'middle' of all of our activities in order to process, clear and report transactions, thereby creating additional workflow steps, potentially slower response times, additional software and connectivity changes and higher costs,” he said.
Hirani has encouraged trueEX’s clients to directly ask Markit why is has decided to take this action and convince it to withdraw the decision.
A spokesperson at Markit said the firm has no comment on the complaint.