Two major bond-trading firms have blessed the effort to share information with fixed income investors and dealers.
Citibank and Deutsche Bank are throwing their weight behind the Neptune open-standard network for bond pre-trade, real-time “axe” indications of interest by joining the network and taking two seats on the Neptune board.
The Neptune network offers a venue for dealers to share information with investors on the bonds that may be bought or sold, “making it easier for investors to execute bond transactions,” Neptune officials say. The Neptune project was started by London-based Etrading Software and more than 40 banks and asset managers in 2014, officials say. The group has been pushing to add market participants to this network utility.
The Neptune project is focused on helping asset managers use “their preferred method of visualizing the pre-trade data – this includes in-house OMS [order management system], third-party OMS vendors or a direct FIX connection,” according to the vendor. “This flexibility is continuing to attract further membership of the network, as will new product classes and geographies when added to the pre-trade data. This can be achieved without incurring further technology costs.”
Neptune officials report that 17 bond dealers have joined the network, which provides information in real-time on more than 11,500 different bond securities with over $100 billion in gross notional across 20 different denominations, including $30 billion in U.S. liquidity, officials say. The information is generated via the “more than 17,000 pre-trade, real-time AXE indications in the system on a daily basis,” officials say.
Grant Wilson, CEO of Neptune Networks
“The addition of Citi and Deutsche Bank, both market leaders in bonds, to the Neptune network, is an important step forward in the development of our open-access, non-discriminatory network that links bond market participants and makes the markets more efficient,” says Grant Wilson, CEO of Neptune Networks, in a prepared statement.
In addition, Citi and Deutsche Bank are taking stakes in Neptune and will have representatives joining the Neptune board, according to Neptune. “The two institutions will start providing their data to the network very shortly,” officials add.
“Adding two market leaders such as Citi and Deutsche Bank to the already strong Neptune board, comprised of sell-side and buy-side, is an important step to expand the reach and scope of the Neptune pre-trade data network both locally, in EMEA, and more broadly in other key regions such as the US and Asia,” Wilson says.
Neptune describes itself as a not-for-profit technology utility set up in 2015 to increase and improve the quality of information available to corporate bond market participants, and thereby strengthen liquidity. The data is provided to the network using an open standard which means it is cheap for users to connect to the network, and the data is easy to integrate with order management systems.
In addition to expanding its networking members, Neptune has released a watch list for the functions of the Neptune desktop. “The watch list allows users to focus solely on their instruments of interest, accelerating identification and matching of sources for their required assets,” according to Neptune officials.
Among the Neptune Project members are: Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, RBD Capital Markets, Société Générale and the London branch of UBS.
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