London Stock Exchange Group’s MTS Markets International subsidiary has received regulatory approval to give Swiss participants direct access to US corporate bond trading to add to its expansion in the US market.
The exchange said in a statement today that the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority has authorised Swiss sellside and buyside firms to trade US corporate and emerging market debt in MTS BondsPro ATS, an all-to-all electronic trading platform.
Institutions domiciled in Switzerland can now trade a range of US dollar-denominated corporate bonds with a network of 300 dealers and 350 buy-side institutions in the US and UK.
Mark Monahan, chief executive of MTS Markets International, said in a statement: “With liquidity an ever-present issue in the global credit markets, using technology to facilitate cross border flows has become more crucial than ever. By enabling Swiss market participants to trade in MTS BondsPro’s liquidity pool, we continue to further diversify the network for the benefit of the market overall.”
MTS is participating in Markets Media’s Fixed Income Summit in London today.
In May last year MTS acquired corporate bond trading platform Bonds.com – which is now MTS BondsPro – to expand its credit offering for US and UK clients.
In the European government bond market MTS provides a trading environment through BondVision. In February this year MTS Markets International launched an alternative trading system in the US for BondVision to satisfy a growing appetite for access to global fixed income markets. Bondvision provides buyside institutions with a view of inter-dealer prices, streamed from 25 market-making banks on government bonds from 30 different European countries, with a particular focus on peripheral markets including Spain, Italy and France.
Barry Cohen, managing director at Society Generale, said in a statement at the time: “From a dealer’s perspective, connecting with our US-based clients on our strongest product offerings, such as European government bonds, remains the key to our success and growth in the US portion of our business. MTS BondVision US will be another technology that enables us to broaden our core distribution in the US, and we embrace these tools wholeheartedly.”
MTS cross-sells across both platforms to US market participants as the firm operates as one broker-dealer with two separate ATSs.
Monahan told Markets Media in February: “They are two separate ATSs, but we have clients who trade credit that are also interested in international rates, and we’ve given them documentation so we can set them up under our other ATS [BondVision] as well. We have been bringing on a lot of new clients since the acquisition by LSEG, and we are going to offer everyone who comes on board the ability to sign up for both ATSs.”
Consultancy Celent said in a report in September that the interdealer-broker government bond market is still dominated by MTS and BrokerTec while the dealer-to-client government bond market is still dominated by Tradeweb and Bloomberg.
“The D2C non-government business has grown dramatically and has seen a slight increase in electronification, but also some additional voice business thanks to sales technology,” added Celent. “The IDB non-government market is flat year on year, but with big market share swings. EMEA emerging economies are still attractive for D2C electronic platforms.”
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