Tradeweb Markets, a provider of fixed income, derivatives and ETF marketplaces, saw trading activity in European spread products/Eurobonds reach a record-breaking EUR73.8 billion in the first quarter of 2017.
This beat Q1 2016 by 22.3 per cent and the previous record-holder Q1 2015 by 21.5 per cent.
Volume executed in European credit alone surpassed EUR 38.32 billion, a 21.4 per cent increase from Q1 2016 and previous record quarter.
March 2017 was also the third consecutive record month for the Tradeweb European Credit platform, with more than EUR 14.17 billion in notional volume, up 10.2 per cent from February 2017 and 51.6 per cent year on year. Tradeweb reported that one-sided axes posted by dealers on its Eurobond platform peaked at more than EUR 100 billion in Q1 2017, up 50 per cent year on year. Over the same time period, the number of axes – which link pre-trade information with trade execution – nearly doubled to reach 18,888.
Enrico Bruni (pictured), managing director and head of Europe and Asia business at Tradeweb, says: “There is not a one-size- fits-all solution for the entire spectrum of market liquidity and therefore we continue to build infrastructures to help our clients streamline their workflows through innovative and robust trading protocols. Given our experience in building and operating electronic fixed income platforms for wholesale, institutional and retail trading globally, we are well suited to develop a comprehensive suite of trading tools that serve different liquidity needs of market participants.”
Tradeweb recently introduced Blast RFQ, a flexible approach to trade and source liquidity for multiple smaller transactions in European credit, enabling clients to send enquiries to all of their liquidity providers simultaneously. Blast RFQ can be combined with existing FlexRFQ functionality, a feature which allows users to replace non quoting dealers without shutting down their initial inquiry, restricting trade information leakage.
“Building on the successful launch of FlexRFQ last year, we looked at providing investors with even more choice when executing their strategy, and delivering greater flexibility in counterparty selection,” says Bruni. “We see clients regularly using Flex and Blast RFQ in conjunction with our SNAP functionality, which helps them select the most competitive axes or prices streamed by market makers on our platform.”
