Fixed Income Giants to Form JV for EU Fixed Income Tape Bid

Fixed income platform giants Bloomberg, MarketAxess and Tradeweb have announced the signing of a joint venture agreement, to establish an independent company for the purpose of participating in the public procurement procedure to become the fixed income consolidated tape provider (CTP) in the European Union, all subject to relevant regulatory approvals.

The firms have appointed Neil Ryan to lead the CTP initiative, an industry veteran with over 30 years in various senior positions across the public and private sectors. The firms say Ryan will focus on producing a comprehensive prototype that utilises the expertise of the three parties in fixed income markets and trade reporting, to be able to deliver a high-quality consolidated tape (CT) that will provide enhanced transparency and access to robust, reliable data. “This initiative reflects the Parties’ combined desire to improve the fixed income ecosystem and make a meaningful investment in winning the tender for the European bond CT,” the firms say in a statement.

“The time has come to provide the European fixed income markets with a consolidated tape that is led by an initiative with deep experience in low-latency data processing, cleansing, consolidation and publishing within a regulated framework,” says Ryan. “Our motivation is to improve transparency and spur electronification in the fixed income space. Our end goal is a cost-effective CT that treats both data contributors and consumers fairly, while enabling open and impartial access to meaningful and helpful data using existing infrastructure.”

Finbourne Technology, a cloud-native financial data management firm for whom Ryan has been consulting for the past two-and-a-half years, has been selected as the technology infrastructure provider to build and operate the CT for the JV. The three firms say Finbourne’s appointment was the culmination of “a detailed and rigorous evaluation process, which considered critical compliance, operational, technical and security aspects of a fit-for-purpose CT”.

As a result, Finbourne will now work closely with the joint initiative to demonstrate the capabilities and features of their proposed CT platform.