TradeWeb is widely acknowledged as having revolutionized US commercial paper, and it may soon pull off the same trick in Europe. In the first quarter of 2002, TradeWeb estimates that it was handling more than 10% of the market, based on Federal Reserve data. Since then, volumes have grown steadily. In the first week of 2002 they were at around $62 billion. In the week before Euromoney went to see the platform in September for these awards, volumes were at $102 billion.
The inventory trading system enables investors to search in a variety of ways through the offerings of whichever of TradeWeb's nine dealers they have a relationship with - and these include some of the biggest players in the market, with an average of 2,300 offerings displayed each day. The user enters the parameters of the paper they want - maturity range, minimum size, minimum yield - to produce a filter that can be saved and applied repeatedly.
This brings up a list of dealer offerings, with quantities, maturities, yield and discount levels, ratings from Moody's and S&P, and live prices. Each of these variables can be used to sort the selection, so that, for example, investors who can only buy paper of a certain regulatory type can easily weed out what doesn't concern them.