Fixed income trading platform Bondcube has signed a deal with agency broker ITG’s US arm, making it a trading intermediary.
The deal will see ITG facilitate the settlement of trades between its clients and Bondcube users, increasing the probability of both sides being able to match up orders.
Bondcube told theTRADEnews.com that it has been discussing the deal with ITG for the past six months.
“It was clear that our businesses are complementary. ITG offers a blotter scraping model for fixed income business while we are based on anonymous indications of interest (IOIs) and our client bases are also complementary,” explained Paul Reynolds, CEO of Bondcube.
He also revealed the platform is in discussions with other potential liquidity partners as part of its growth strategy.
“A bit part of the liquidity problem in fixed income is caused by fragmentation, because the buy-side, who hold the liquidity, only deal with their brokers,” added Reynolds.
“We want to bring as much liquidity together as possible to maximise the number of matches so we will be making similar announcements to this in the next few months.”
Bondcube is also hoping that, by signing up liquidity partnerships with other businesses, it will be able to garner enough liquidity to reach the critical mass that the buy-side needs in order to justify the cost of connecting to its platform.