Last month, Bloomberg entered into an agreement to acquire Broadway Technology, LLC, a provider of high-performance fixed income trading and workflow solutions.
In this exclusive interview for TradingTech Insight, Broadway Technology’s CEO, Michael Chin, discusses the background behind the deal, the synergy between the two companies, and what this partnership means for the future of Broadway and its clients.
The road to acquisition
The journey leading up to the proposed acquisition started with what Chin refers to as ‘Broadway 2.0’, which was launched in January 2021 after the company divested from its previous owner ION. Chin joined soon after as CEO and immediately focused on setting goals and objectives to meet the company’s technology and business plans.
“When we split from ION, we essentially broke the company in half, and I took on the task of immediately finding more talent in the market. In the first year, we grew headcount by over 25%,” says Chin. “We built our business with the core belief of enabling change through continuous innovation and a commitment to listening to our customers and creatively solving their hardest problems. We also focused on building partnerships, innovating in the right space, and adding new customer functionality.”
Why Bloomberg?
Chin discusses the strategic decision behind the company’s potential acquisition and shares his enthusiasm for the joint Broadway/Bloomberg proposition, citing the numerous benefits it could bring in terms of scale, innovation, customer reach, and overall business growth.
“I always had the goal in mind to scale the company in ways that would allow us to further innovate and grow our product set,” he says. “Clearly, Bloomberg would allow us to scale in ways we couldn’t do on our own. We see this potential combination as an enormous opportunity to offer a wider breadth of solutions to meet the needs of a more diverse customer base. We believe that completing this transaction would lead to growth for everyone involved and expand offerings for existing and future customers. And news of the acquisition has received an overwhelmingly positive response from customers,” he adds.
Product & company synergy
From a product perspective, Chin suggests that Broadway’s low latency and highly customisable solutions, supporting fixed income rates markets, are highly complementary to Bloomberg’s credit EMS. “The combination would allow both companies to accelerate product innovation and enable a combined Bloomberg and Broadway offering of a truly competitive, industry-leading cross-asset EMS solution,” he says.
At this point, there are no plans to change how Broadway supports, services, and delivers products to its clients, says Chin. “Until closing, Broadway and Bloomberg will continue to operate as distinct and independent companies. We are still and always will be committed to preserving the customisability, interoperability, and the low latency nature of the Broadway product. Those are our unique differentiators, and we’re sticking to them. Our platform technology, the TOC, is foundational to our entire trading stack. Post-acquisition, we expect future developments would provide our clients with more options for customising their deployments of Broadway’s solution to create even greater efficiencies.”
A promising future
Chin is confident that the future looks promising. He predicts that Bloomberg will offer a platform to continue Broadway’s current success at an even greater scale.
“I believe that fixed income markets are going through a step change in electronification across a broader set of assets, with a growing need to incorporate automation, and an ever-higher demand for low latency trading,” he says. “And this acquisition would give us the scale needed to reach a broader customer base and accelerate our product roadmap.”
He concludes: “This really is a match made in heaven on so many different levels. We see Bloomberg as a great company and brand. They see the same thing in Broadway, with product innovation and the commitment to delivering the highest level of service to our customers being key. The cultures are synergistic, as both companies value transparency, collaboration, fairness, and being employee-first. I’m really committed to making sure that every single one of Broadway’s employees finds an amazing home at Bloomberg.”
The acquisition certainly does seem to present an exciting opportunity for both companies. With aligned company cultures, complementary product offerings, and a shared commitment to innovation, the combined entity is poised to make a significant impact on the fixed income trading technology landscape.
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