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the-counter( OTC) nature of the bond market, it can often be difficult to gain a good sense of market prices. Almost unanimously, individuals within the fixed income space agree that the tape will benefit the industry and is a vital step in providing innovation by enhancing market intelligence, liquidity analysis, execution benchmarking, compliance surveillance.
Highlighting the advantages of having a CT for bonds, Neil Ryan, chief executive-designate and project lead at BondTape, one of the firms which bid for both ESMA’ s and the FCA’ s tape, said:“ I think that the tape will really drive the fixed income market in Europe and the UK forward, and provide more understanding as to where the data is coming from and how it can be used in systems. So potentially over time it could have a very significant influence, building trust and reliability in the data that ' s provided to the market. It ' s the start of at least a five-year adventure.”
Additionally, across the industry, eliminating the need to undertake lengthy procedures of cleaning data individually is paramount, and a key benefit that the tape is expected to provide.
Speaking on this, Sharon Ruffles, managing director, head of fixed income dealing, EMEA and APAC at State Street Investment Management, explained:“ Up until now, we ' ve all been reporting and following a transparency regiment. But it’ s kind of like going into a black hole. The data is being stored in a public domain, but there’ s 50 plus fields of data that I would need to pull and scrape and clean in order for it to be in any way meaningful.
“ That ' s what the consolidated tape will do. It will take that data and clean it and give it to me in a format that is readable to me and to my systems and platforms that I use.”
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