By Mark McSherry
Bloomberg, MarketAxess and Tradeweb announced they have signed a joint venture agreement to establish an independent joint venture company “for the purpose of participating in the public procurement procedure to become the fixed income consolidated tape provider (CTP) in the European Union.”
The companies have appointed Neil Ryan to lead the CTP initiative.
Ryan is an industry veteran with over 30 years in various senior positions across the public and private sectors, with vast experience in fixed income.
The companies Ryan will focus on “producing a comprehensive prototype that utilises the expertise of the parties in fixed income markets and trade reporting, to be able to deliver a high-quality consolidated tape (CT) that will provide enhanced transparency and access to robust, reliable data.”
They said the initiative “reflects the prties’ combined desire to improve the fixed income ecosystem and make a meaningful investment in winning the tender for the European bond CT.”
Ryan said commented: “The time has come to provide the European fixed income markets with a consolidated tape that is led by an initiative with deep experience in low-latency data processing, cleansing, consolidation and publishing within a regulated framework.
“Our motivation is to improve transparency and spur electronification in the fixed income space. Our end goal is a cost-effective CT that treats both data contributors and consumers fairly, while enabling open and impartial access to meaningful and helpful data using existing infrastructure.”
Finbourne Technology, a cloud-native financial data management firm, has been selected by the parties as the technology infrastructure provider to build and operate the CT for the JV company.
Finbourne CEO Thomas McHugh said: “We are pleased to have won the tender to work with these leading firms, who are deeply focused on quality data, and are highly experienced in fixed income markets and running regulated Approved Publication Arrangements (APAs).
“Importantly, we see this as further validation of our modern, cloud-based, API-first technology, to deliver critical market data access and transparency.”
Tradeweb Markets Inc. also announced it has collaborated with FTSE Russell to launch benchmark closing prices for European government bonds.
“With bond indices, ETFs and trade-at-close strategies becoming more and more integral to fixed income markets, the need for reliable and transparent closing price data has never been greater,” said Enrico Bruni, Head of Europe and Asia Business at Tradeweb.
“FTSE Russell is a global leader in benchmarking and we look forward to extending our successful collaboration to other global markets going forward.”