As European head of government bonds at JP Morgan, Eloi Duverger sought to expand Morgan's client franchise by reaching out to clients who the bank did not cover. Rather than get "an army of 100 sales people", he recalls, he decided to do it the modern way.
What the Frenchman came up with last year was JP Morgan eXpress, an electronic trading platform designed to sound nippier than Deutsche's existing "Autobahn" facility and to offer a market-making service to new or uncovered clients. "They loved it," says Duverger. "But soon they were saying they wanted one system giving them access to competitive quotes from different dealers."
Such sentiments echoed those being heard at Deutsche Bank, where Saman Majd, global head of government bonds, was fast coming to the conclusion that what was needed was a web-based system similar to those that already existed in the US.
Earlier this year representatives of ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Dres-dner Bank, JP Morgan and Italy's Caboto Holding Sim met to discuss a joint initiative, realizing that if they didn't act fast someone would beat them to it. Thus was born BondClick, Europe's First platform for trading in European government bonds in cyberspace.