European Fixed Income Markets Open Trading Platform - BlackRock & MarketAxess Alliance

MarketAxess and BlackRock's collaboration in the global credit markets extended through a strategic co-operation that sees the two firms serve the European fixed income trading community. The two listed providers were expanding their Open Trading™ alliance into Europe. The moves complements the firms’ successful offering in the US.

Participants in the European credit markets are expected to benefit from advanced Liquidity and lower dealing fees as the developers of Open Trading extend their presence into Europe. Users will also benefit from access to unique market data from Trax®, with volume and pricing data from 40,000 daily regulatory reported transactions, and quoted and traded prices on over 50,000 unique bonds.

Rick McVey, Chairman and CEO of MarketAxess, spoke in the media briefing: “Our Open Trading Alliance with BlackRock in the U.S. has led to meaningful improvement in credit market liquidity and a promising path forward to deal with much larger global credit markets and significant regulatory changes. We are very pleased to extend this alliance to Europe where investors and dealers are facing many of the same liquidity challenges. Over 7% of U.S. high-grade trades on MarketAxess now take place via Open Trading protocols, compared to just 2% a year ago. We have seen an acceleration in adoption rates for Open Trading by both dealers and investors as market volatility has increased. ”

“MarketAxess has been a tremendous partner and we are excited for this next step in delivering innovative liquidity solutions that benefit BlackRock’s asset management and Aladdin clients,” said Richie Prager, Global Head of Trading and Liquidity Strategies at BlackRock in a statement. “The fixed income investment landscape has evolved more quickly than the market’s underlying structure for transacting, challenging buyers’ and sellers’ abilities to connect and transact and requiring investors to explore new avenues of liquidity to meet their needs.”

The firms also reported that the partnership coincides with the launch of MarketAxess’ all-to-all Open Trading in European credit products, leveraging the broad network of institutional participants on the MarketAxess Trading Platform . Open Trading enables all buyers and sellers to source liquidity from all other MarketAxess system participants in a single, independent marketplace for credit trading.