If all goes according to plan, electronic block trading has come to the corporate bond market.
Liquidnet, the institutional block trading network that made its name in trading equities, launched its Fixed Income dark pool that facilitates direct, peer-to-peer trading of corporate bonds among asset managers in the US, Canada and Europe.
Liquidnet said that it has enrolled more than 120 asset managers, representing a sizable pool of liquidity and portion of assets under management for high yield and investment grade bonds in the US. Launched Tuesday, the trading network enabled execution for US and European corporate bonds (high yield and investment grade), emerging market corporate bonds, and European convertible bonds.
According to the firm, the platform has been built with input from Liquidnet’s network of leading asset managers and bolstered by the firm’s experience operating the leading dark pool for the institutional trading of equities. Similar to Liquidnet’s equities solution, the Fixed Income dark pool will provide the option for those corporate bond traders utilizing an order management system (OMS) to easily have their orders swept into the pool with minimal changes to existing workflow.
In June, the firm announced successful integrations with seven OMS operators that support direct connectivity, and a partnership with Interactive Data for continuous evaluated pricing to aid in pre-trade transparency and more efficient best execution analysis. In addition to new features, Liquidnet has also expanded its Fixed Income team and expertise with the recent high-profile appointment of Chris Dennis, formerly of BlackRock, as head of US Fixed Income Sales.
A recent survey of buyside firms-comprising $12.15 trillion in assets under management-conducted by fixed income magazine, The Desk, stated that 58 percent of buy-side respondents indicated that they were planning to move to Liquidnet for their fixed income trading.
