Feb 07, 2012
Vega-Chi launches electronic trading for European high-yield
Vega-Chi, a multilateral
trading facility for bonds, has confirmed the launch of its new electronic order book for
high-yield and subordinated financial bonds in Europe.
The platform offers buy-side
institutions the ability to trade fixed income instruments directly and bypass
intermediaries. According to Vega-Chi, the ability to transact directly allows
institutional investors to obtain better prices for their trades and gives them
a more transparent alternative to the over-the-counter market. Vega-Chi has
over 50 buy-side clients signed up to its platform.
Bonds are typically traded OTC,
but regulatory initiatives including MiFID II are set to impose greater
transparency for fixed income instruments.
"As with our convertible
bond trading platform, we offer our clients a value-added service which allows
them to access liquidity straight from the end-users for high yield bonds and
subordinated debt,” said Constantinos Antoniades, CEO, Vega-Chi. “We
expect the cost savings to clients in the form of better price execution to be
significant. The market response has been very strong and we expect that
Vega-Chi will help the formation of a more efficient market place for the asset
class."
Other bond trading platforms
that offer trading in high-yield bonds include Tradeweb, which added the
instruments to its credit platform last June, and MarketAxess. Unlike
Vega-Chi, both of these platforms offer a dealer-to-customer model, where
buy-side firms request prices from brokers for the exposure they require.