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A start-up aiming to solve issues around the lack of a consolidated tape for fixed income in Europe has more than 20 asset managers looking to join its data pooling network for bond traders .
Glimpse Markets founder and chief executive officer , Paul O ’ Brien , told The TRADE that 21 buy-side firms are going through the legal review process to sign up to the data sharing platform , with plans to go live in the fourth quarter this year .
“ It ’ s a very simple ‘ Give to Get ’ model . Essentially , you need to have some skin in the game in order to get the aggregated data from everybody else for free , so the buy-side are incentivised to share their trading data ,” O ’ Brien told The TRADE .
“ We have tried to remove as many barriers to entry as possible both in terms of cost and ease of integration . Ultimately , this is data that buy-side traders don ’ t currently have access to and it ’ s in high demand because the composite pricing which many rely on today is merely an estimate of where the market is .
“ The March and April market volatility this year also highlighted some of the limitations of composite and indicative pricing in that they ’ re not always a true reflection of where the market is . There really is no substitute for live traded prices for corporate bonds . That just doesn ’ t exist in Europe , and that ’ s the issue we are trying to address .”
The start-up is also independent and currently building out a buyside advisory board for governance to provide input on strategy and direction , consisting of around eight to 10 heads of trading .
O ’ Brien is a veteran fixed income product manager , having
Bond data pooling start-up gains traction with buy-side
Former MTS product head , Paul O ' Brien , will soon launch a data pooling network for buy-side bond traders via start-up Glimpse Markets .
“ The market volatility highlighted the limitations of composite and indicative pricing in that they ’ re not always a true reflection of where the market is .” recently served as head of buyside solutions and fixed income electronic trading at the London Stock Exchange Group ’ s bond trading platform MTS for the past four years . He has also spent time during his career building out platforms for Algomi and Etrading Software .
Glimpse Markets is looking to provide traders in Europe with something equivalent to the TRACE system in the US . A consolidated tape for fixed income has been long-sought by bond traders in Europe , but with an equities tape yet to be established , it seems an unlikely development any time soon .
“ There ’ s massive frustration in the industry due to the lack of any reliable post-trade data for corporate bonds in Europe ,” O ’ Brien
58 // TheTRADE // Fall 2020