Deutsche Bank AG, UBS Group AG and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc are considering selling their minority stakes in Tradeweb Markets LLC, a bond and derivatives trading system, according to people familiar with the matter.

Complaints and fears about mandated transparency are warranted, but eliminating or preventing transparency also requires examination. In theory, limited transparency should encourage robust market making activity due to the commercial opportunity available in an inefficient environment. In practice, lack of transparency is the root cause of some of the largest systemic issues in unstructured OTC markets

The ICAP Sponsored Access Model (ISAM) is poised to go live, allowing asset managers to trade fixed income on the inter-dealer market for the first time, via their sell side partners. 

Mutual funds and money-market funds offered by the world’s largest asset manager could borrow up to a third of their assets in total – or up to 10 percent of assets without posting collateral – through BlackRock’s “InterFund Program.”

My greatest error was that I was so committed to altering the competitive landscape in the front-office that I did not adequately structure the firm to simultaneously attack the uncompetitive landscape in the back-office. 

The real issue is that market participants don’t have all the consolidated information at the moment they need it to make immediate decisions.  Lack of consolidated information is hurting our market. 

In 2007, the market for Credit Default Swaps (CDS) was on a six year journey from relative obscurity, to being the hottest financial product in the world. The outstanding notional size of the market had grown from less than $1 Trillion in the beginning of 2001, to over $60 Trillion by the end of 2007, with no signs of stopping. Almost ten years later, the outstanding size of the CDS market is hovering just over $10 Trillion, the result of eight consecutive years of decline.

Now the ECB is in full throes of CSPP, which began June 8th, and disclosed information about its holdings on July 18th, we have the data to test out these liquidity fears. Firstly, a big caveat is in order. There’s no standard and objective measure of bond market liquidity since bonds are predominately traded over the counter (OTC), unlike stocks

Project Sentinel, the bank collaboration to mutualise the cost of MiFID II implementation in the OTC front office, has completed the detailed business requirements that meet MiFID II regulatory obligations.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. kicked off earnings season last week by beating estimates as fixed-income trading revenue and loan growth jumped. Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. also exceeded estimates, while Wells Fargo & Co.’s results were in line with expectations. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on Tuesday said net income surged 74 percent on gains in fixed-income trading and debt underwriting.