In October, Thomson Financial finally revealed that nine dealer banks had bought a minority stake in its TradeWeb debt trading platform. The move, one of the worst-kept secrets in the trading technology sector (see The coming revolution in fixed income e-trading Euromoney, August 2007), gives strong signals about future likely distribution channels of fixed-income product. Furthermore, it bolsters TradeWeb’s position just as another dealer consortium – LiquidityHub – gets up and running. LiquidityHub started trading interest rate swaps late last month. Strictly speaking, it is not a trading platform; its purpose is to pool dealer liquidity in various fixed-income sectors. LiquidityHub has struck distribution deals with Bloomberg and Reuters.
| "What this partnership does is it positions us to take the business forward in the context of technology’s growth in the financial services space" Lee Olesky, Thomson TradeWeb |
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Lee Olesky, president of Thomson TradeWeb, says: "For TradeWeb, this positions us as a solution for multi-asset class trading. We started this business a little over 10 years ago – and we have been growing asset classes and customers at a fairly significant pace. What this partnership does is it positions us to take the business forward in the context of technology’s growth in the financial services space."