Bloomberg has gone live facilitating trades for Hong Kong market makers on the newly launched Southbound Bond Connect service.
Initially announced earlier this month, the Southbound Bond Connect program went live on 24 September with the aim of further connecting Mainland and Hong Kong institutional investors.
It builds on the Northbound Bond Connect service originally launched in 2017.
Via the Bond Connect service, offshore dealers can provide onshore investors with market-making services via Bloomberg’s Terminal to initiate requests for quote (RFQ) from China Foreign Exchange Trade System’s (CFETS) bond trading platform.
Bloomberg’s Trade Order Management System (TOMS), which is connected to CFETS’ bond trading platform, is used by dealers to provide pricing in response to requests, allowing for improved efficiency without disruption to existing market-making businesses.
Onshore investors will be able to access displayed security master data and Bloomberg Evaluated Pricing (BVAL) data of eligible securities on the CFETS bond trading platform.
Bloomberg claimed to have already facilitated trades for seven Hong Kong market makers with more than 40 investors including Bank of China Hong Kong, Bank of Communications Hong Kong Branch, China CITIC Bank International, China Construction Bank Corporation Asia, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Asia, and Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong.
“The launch of Southbound Bond Connect over Bloomberg today builds on our position as the first global trading platform connected to CFETS to offer dual access to CIBM Direct and Bond Connect and demonstrates strong demand from onshore investors to participate in the Hong Kong bond markets,” said Ben Macdonald, Bloomberg’s global head of enterprise products.
“We are proud of our role in facilitating global access to China’s fixed income market participants through our trading solutions, benchmark indices and data offerings.”