A group of Wall Street’s largest banks have joined forces to create a new market for private placements, adding to already intense competition to establish the industry standard trading platform for unregistered US securities, Financial Times reports.
The new system, known as the Open Platform for Unregistered Securities (Opus-5), is backed by Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and The Bank of New York Mellon.
It is designed to enable an open market with multiple market makers and is designed to provide broad liquidity to the US private placement market and give greater access to capital for issuers in the private placement or 144A market.
Competition in the area was heightened further on Tuesday when Bear Stearns unveiled its own platform for private placements, known as Best Markets.
Other banks, including JP Morgan, with its 144A Plus platform, and Goldman Sachs through its GSTrUE system have already established a presence in the private placement market.