Last week, StoneX, the Nasdaq-listed provider of digital marketplaces and clearing and execution services across commodities, foreign exchange and securities,announced LoanMatch.
This is a new dark pool for anonymous dealing in European syndicated loans, which is due to go live in September.
Investors will be able to enter buy and sell orders in any given loan, without revealing to the broader market their identities, the direction they want to trade or the size of their orders. They will disclose size and direction only to LoanMatch, which will then calculate a mid price and, in twice daily sessions at 10:00 and 15:00 UK time, match buyers and sellers while charging them a pre-agreed trade commission.
LoanMatch will thus act as a client-to-client dark pool marketplace for roughly 100 large institutional investors active in European loans and approximately 20 to 30 bank loan-portfolio managers. Participants will not only see live market orders, but also active real-time trading.
“This type of market liquidity already exists in the interdealer market, where the brokers match anonymous dealer orders,” Robert Lepone, senior vice-president at StoneX and a veteran loan trader, tells Euromoney. “But we are now taking this to the client side.”
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