Barclays Capital, Nomura International, Nordea and The Royal Bank of Scotland have agreed to deal on TradeWeb, the on-line fixed income trading platform for European Government bonds. The three banks have also joined the platform to trade Euro supranational and public agency debt. TradeWeb now has 21 market makers.
“We are committed to providing institutional investors with access to the leading global dealers in the market”, says Lee Olesky, President of TradeWeb. “Barclays, Nomura, Nordea and The Royal Bank of Scotland have responded to the needs of their customers by joining our trading platform and will make a significant contribution to increased transparency and liquidity in the market. Our customers are continuing to trade increasingly greater volumes on a daily basis, with a recent record turnover across all products with European clients exceeding Euros 9 billion. Average daily volumes with European customers have exploded by 45 per cent so far this year compared with the last quarter of 2002. Our customers are also increasingly executing larger trades, including a recent record trade of EUR1 billion. These new dealers have joined the platform at a very exciting time in TradeWeb’s development.”
Barclays Capital’s Head of Client Technology and European Rates Sales, Justin Bull added: “We believe TradeWeb is currently the pre-eminent fixed income multi-dealer platform in Europe. By joining this platform, we are not only able to provide our clients with enhanced liquidity, but it also complements the recent rebuild of our European Rates product and our technology platform. In our opinion, this combined functionality will provide our clients with the most up-to-date trading execution services available in Europe today”.
Nomura’s Head of Government & High Grade Credit Sales, Charlie Manners says: “TradeWeb is an important part of Nomura’s expansion of its customer franchise in light of its impressive growth in the fixed-income electronic trading market. Nomura’s participation in both the TradeWeb European Sovereign and Supranational Trading platforms will further enhance our distribution capabilities and provide our customers with a fast and efficient trade execution tool”.
Nordea’s Head of Global Trading, Michael Watson commented: “We are joining TradeWeb because it is the leading multi-dealer trading platform on fixed-income products. We endeavour to add value to our customers, and by making it possible for them to execute trades with us electronically instead of over the telephone, we will now achieve new efficiencies for our customers”.
The Royal Bank of Scotland Financial Markets Head of Liquid Product Sales, Iain Wright added: “Joining TradeWeb allows us to provide our institutional investors with greater depth and breadth of liquidity on the platform of their choice. We look forward to working with TradeWeb in the months ahead”.
TradeWeb says the addition of the 4 new dealers has been welcomed by institutional investors. “We have been using TradeWeb for some time and the majority of our European Government bond transactions are executed there,”says Deutsche Postbank’s Head of Fixed Income, Ronald Graf. “TradeWeb not only proves to be the most efficient way for us to execute large trades but provides us with greater transparency and dealer liquidity. TradeWeb’s Euro Sovereign and Supranational products will be greatly enhanced by the addition of these new dealers”.State Street’s Chief Investment Officer – Global Collateral Management, Mike Karpik added: “It is very helpful to have such a range of strong dealers on TradeWeb’s multi-product platform”.
TradeWeb claims to have executed over 3 million trades worth $22 trillion since its inception in 1998. It links the 21 market-makers with more than 1,300 buy-side institutions in 23 countries around the world.
The other dealers supporting the TradeWeb platform are CSFB, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Salomon Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Greenwich Capital, ABN AMRO, Bear Stearns, UBS Warburg, Commerzbank, HSBC, Societe Generale, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, BNP Paribas and Banc of America Securities.