| Olesky: "The challenges are the |
TradeWeb, the biggest dealer-to-client trading platform for rates products in fixed income, is finding it difficult to break into corporate bonds.
Having started life as a platform for US treasuries, it has added a range of products including euro sovereigns, US commercial paper, mortgage bonds and others, all with healthy rates of success. However, bad market conditions are hampering efforts to launch corporate bond trading.
It is looking increasingly likely that MarketAxess will thrive as the corporate bond trading platform preferred by fund managers, as it continues to demonstrate new records in trading volumes.
The two networks are often considered to be rivals even though they trade entirely different products, with TradeWeb in government bonds and super-liquid credits and MarketAxess in corporate bonds. So when TradeWeb announced its plans to start beta testing corporate bond trading in July 2002 it was the first time that it looked set to compete directly for client flows.
At the time, TradeWeb told Euromoney that it expected corporate bond trading to come out of beta testing as soon as August.