Best consortium site for bond trading
TradeWeb
Fund managers do not want to have to deal with more than one internet platform for trading bonds. And yet hardly a week goes by without a new set of banks announcing a new set of initiatives for a new internet bond trading platform with a silly name. And it’s a tough job for internet start-ups to prove themselves, with the efficient set of trading platforms already available on Bloomberg.
TradeWeb is different from those new initiatives. It works, and it has the turnover, the bank support and the expansion plans to prove it. It has succeeded here where others have failed because it does not try to change trading practices that work. It just makes them easier.
TradeWeb boasts an impressive list of market making banks as its members. UBS Warburg, ABN Amro, Bear Stearns and Prudential Securities recently saw the light and joined CSFB, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, MSDW, Merrill Lynch, Salomon Brothers, Deutsche Bank, Barclays Capital, JP Morgan, Chase and Greenwich Capital as members.
TradeWeb was launched to eight customers in 1998 as a platform for trading US treasury bonds. That market is so liquid and commoditized, and it makes up such an important part of investor portfolios, that it was an obvious place to start.