Trading Technologies (TT), the trading software, infrastructure and data solutions provider, has acquired London-based AxeTrading, a global provider of fixed income trading solutions. The acquisition significantly expands TT’s multi-asset capabilities to cover corporate, government, municipal, and emerging market bonds, as well as over-the-counter (OTC) interest rate swaps, and bolsters TT’s standing in fixed income derivatives and U.S. Treasuries.
AxeTrading, with over a decade of experience, caters to a diverse range of global clients through its platform. In addition to connecting to all major fixed income trading venues, including Tradeweb, MarketAxess and Bloomberg, the platform boasts a customizable pricing and quote management engine, and provides automated workflow management tools to help market participants handle the complexities of pricing, quoting, and trading fixed income products across various venues and protocols.
Fifteen months on from TT’s acquisition by London-based private equity firm 7RIDGE, the acquisition of AxeTrading marks the latest move in TT’s growth strategy, following the company’s investment in risk management technology company KRM22, and its acquisition of RCM-X, a Chicago-based technology provider of algorithmic execution strategies and quantitative trading products. In the last year, TT has also entered into strategic partnerships with Talos, a provider of institutional digital asset trading technology, Bantix Technologies, an options software development company, and European derivatives exchange Eurex, to provide access to the Eurex EnLight RFQ solution through TT’s global distribution network.
“This is our first material step to the centre of the fixed income asset class,” says TT’s CEO Keith Todd, speaking to TradingTech Insight from the International Futures Industry Conference in Boca Raton, FL, adding, “although TT handles US Treasuries and can do basis trading and simple yield trading, we’ve never really been in the corporate bond and municipal bond world.”
“This expands the fixed income coverage across a much wider marketplace,” adds Nick Garrow, who joined TT as EVP Multi-Asset & Buy Side last April. “With AxeTrading comes access to connectivity to 40+ fixed income trading venues. This is brand new product coverage for TT, which is one of the reasons why we thought the deal made great sense.”
Commenting on how the two platforms will be integrated, Todd confirms that all future customers will be hosted as a managed service. “We can do that out of the box immediately,” he says. “Over the next 12 months, we intend to integrate AxeTrading into the TT platform, but with different front ends for different use cases. If you’re a fixed income trader, a commodities trader, a Muni trader, you want to look at different features and functions. So the integration will be stepped, but the end game is full integration with not just one UI, but multiple.”
“The interoperability between different market segments is not only something that TT’s clients will benefit from,” adds Mark Watters, Co-Founder at AxeTrading. “AxeTrading’s clients will also benefit from the ability to trade between different asset classes, for example hedging bond trades with futures. Immediately out of the box, TT brings the ability to do that. Also, being able to deliver managed services offering API integrations that will add value for our mutual clients is very compelling.”
“The principle when you acquire a company is ‘do no harm’,” concludes Todd. “AxeTrading already has momentum; it’s got a good client base and good prospects. So we’re not going to change everything overnight. It will evolve in the future rather than everything having to be done TT’s way.”
Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
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