MTS – the fixed income platform of the London Stock Exchange Group – has announced a partnership with bank inventory system B2Scan to improve pre-trade information and execution for buy side traders.
The deal means buy side traders will be able to find a bank willing to buy or sell a bond or list of bonds and execute the trades through the MTS BondVision system.
Speaking to The TRADE, Simon Linwood, head of credit for MTS, said dealers can have complete faith that they retain full control about what can be seen on BondVision or B2Scan, when using the service.
He said: “The dealer is always in control. Dealers are always concerned about where the data is going and how it can be misplaced or sent to the wrong people but that was one of the strongest parts of the B2Scan system.
“The level of trust is already there because dealers have been working with MTS for some years in many cases.”
Frederic Semour, managing director of B2Scan, who worked on both the sell side and the buy side before launching B2Scan, said the company does not ‘sell’ any of the data it receives.
Simon Linwood added: “It is fair to say that all of the focus is around pre-trade at the moment in the dealing and investment community.”
The announcement comes as concerns about bond market liquidity persist.
Last year, Mark Holman, chief executive officer of bond specialist TwentyFour Asset Management told The TRADE’s sister title, Chief Investment Officer, that fixed income inventories of investment banks had fallen dramatically since the crisis while bond funds had doubled in size.