NYSE Euronext and TradingScreen today announced a partnership to give institutional investors easier access to corporate bond markets that meet the criteria defined by the Cassiopeia Committee in April 2010. NYSE BondMatch is one such market.
Under the terms of this partnership, NYSE Euronext will finance, for a period of three months, costs relating to software licences allowing institutional investors to view the European Central Order Book (ECOB), which displays liquidity on NYSE BondMatch and will include TradingScreen’s soon-to-be-launched multi-lateral trading facility, called Galaxy.
As soon as institutional investors are ready to trade on the ECOB, their screens will be reconfigured from “view” to “trading” mode by TradingScreen, and licensing costs will shift to the market-member intermediaries that these investors have selected to execute their orders.
This partnership will allow institutional investors to view the NYSE BondMatch and Galaxy orderbooks even before they decide how they will connect to the market. During the first few months, NYSE Euronext and Galaxy will bear initial licensing costs to facilitate decision-making and connection.
The ECOB virtually consolidates orderbooks of bond markets meeting the Cassiopeia criteria. It was developed with the backing of the NYSE BondMatch Strategy Committee led by Christophe Roupie, head of Trading and Securities Financing at Axa Investment Managers.
“We are delighted with our partnership with TradingScreen, which will facilitate institutional investors’ access to the secondary bond market and improve market transparency,” said Roland Bellegarde,
Executive Vice President for European Listing Business and Cash Trading at NYSE Euronext. “TradingScreen supplies institutional investors with display and trading screens that are easy to interface with systems operated by market members. This makes for totally integrated access—a solution that gives institutional investors a view of the NYSE BondMatch orderbook, and encourages them to become active, intermediated market participants very quickly.”
Philippe Buhannic, President and Chief Executive Officer of TradingScreen, added “We are delighted to support the efforts of NYSE Euronext to make markets more efficient and to bring a solution to the liquidity issues faced by the corporate bond market today. TradingScreen’s mission is, after all, to simplify global markets.”
Christophe Roupie, Chairman of the NYSE BondMatch Strategy Committee, said “Regulatory changes have created very clear rules for transparency and price discovery on OTC markets, to better protect the interests of investors at the end of the chain. NYSE Euronext and TradingScreen are in step with this approach, designed to help improve liquidity on bond markets as banks face higher minimum capital requirements.”
