MarketAxess completes MuniBrokers acquisition

The acquisition of electronic venue MuniBrokers has expanded the municipal bond trading business at MarketAxess after terms were agreed in September.

Fixed income platform provider MarketAxess has completed its acquisition of central electronic venue for interdealer brokers and dealers, MuniBrokers.

MarketAxess said the deal was completed on 9 April after it entered into a definitive agreement to buy MuniBrokers from Hartfield, Titus & Donnelly (HTD) in September last year.

MarketAxess said the deal would build on its existing municipal bond trading offering, after it expanded its access to US taxable municipal bond liquidity through its regulated venues in the UK, Europe and Singapore, in April last year, after seeing full-year municipal bond trading volumes up 53% to $5.1 billion in 2019.

“Our vision is to use innovative technology to create broader trading connections and therefore add more liquidity to the market, which MuniBrokers helps deliver for the broker and dealer community,” said Chris Concannon, president and chief operating officer of MarketAxess.

MuniBrokers connects municipal securities broker’s brokers, institutional traders, and broker-dealers to trade more than $400 million of taxable and tax-exempt municipal bonds each day via an electronic municipal bond marketplace.  

Terms of the deal agreed upon in September were not disclosed, however, the deal was originally expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020. HTD also agreed at the time to continue using the platform to ensure a continued level of liquidity.

MuniBrokers marks the second major acquisition deal by MarketAxess in the last three years, following the closure of its $150 million acquisition of US treasuries marketplace LiquidityEdge in November 2019 that put it in competition with the likes of Tradeweb and CME Group. 

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