About $157 billion of Apple’s $285 billion in cash, mostly held overseas, is invested in corporate debt, making it a leading lender. The cutback in buying, echoed by other tech firms with sizable overseas holdings, such as Alphabet Inc and Oracle Inc., could have an impact on corporate borrowing costs.

A question we posed in a recent research study to the buy side was, first, do you trade on-the-run U.S. Treasurys via an order book?  95% said no. We then asked if they thought gaining access to an order book market for U.S. Treasurys would improve their over execution quality – only 16% thought it would.

There have been numerous false assumptions about what methods would help dealers achieve success in the new market. Institutions that plan to revive their bond market-making business lines must identify which fundamental changes have rendered some traditional business practices obsolete.

Chavez, the bank’s chief financial officer and a former Silicon Valley startup founder, said that part of a spending push has been devoted to analyzing how traders, salespeople and support personnel work, and automating those processes.

“Banks can’t do everything for us, nor should they,” he said. Electronic trading platforms and other alternative liquidity providers can help to the extent that they aggregate liquidity, but block trading remains a significant challenge, Prager said.

After years of debating trading protocols and what should be counted as “true” electronic trading, the debate will shift to who can provide the best data and derived insights that ultimately help both liquidity-makers and takers get their jobs done.

In addition to providing traders with a visualization of relevant historic and real-time data, Katana’s algorithms provide forward looking predictions of the price that will win an RFQ within a certain confidence range. Future developments include being able to price within Katana.

The flap was ignited by Blackstone Group LP’s credit unit, GSO Capital Partners, which is trying to convince the builder to accept a bond refinancing package. GSO’s plan would trigger payments on default insurance that it bought in the credit derivatives market.

A European Commission study has confirmed what every corporate bond market participant already knew was true – the market has a liquidity problem. Everyone is responsible, the EC says, but no one has any incentive to fix the problem. They need to pull together to improve liquidity while there is time. 

A group of 17 US public pension funds and insurers have filed a lawsuit in New York alleging that their access to some electronic trading venues in the world’s biggest government bond market was blocked by a group of banks.