About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Liquidnet Launches Primary Markets for Electronic Trading of New Bond Issues

Subscribe to our newsletter

TP ICAP’s Liquidnet subsidiary has launched a platform to support electronic trading of new issues in fixed income markets.

Liquidnet Primary Markets provides an electronic workflow for new issues in Debt Capital Markets (DCM), together with a new protocol for trading new issues.

Integrated into the existing Liquidnet Fixed Income trading application, the solution provides a dashboard of new issue announcements, which is also available via a web-based portal for non-trading desk users, such as portfolio managers, analysts, and compliance teams. The trading protocol, meanwhile, enables Liquidnet members to trade new issues in investment grade, high-yield and emerging bond markets in the corporate and financial sectors in Europe, and emerging markets bonds in the US.

In recent years, the fixed-income markets have experienced a shift towards greater electronification. But electronic trading of new issue activity has not been available in Europe until now,  according to Paul Tregidgo, Senior Advisor with Liquidnet. “Traditionally, new issues have been traded every way possible except electronically, primarily using voice,” he says. “In Europe, electronic trading of new issue activity has not been activated, so this is the first time Europe has seen it.”

The company has consulted extensively with major market participants to build a customised and electronic solution for new debt issuance, says Mark Russell, Global Head of Fixed Income at Liquidnet. “We’ve been working with engaged working groups from Liquidnet members, including major institutional asset managers and more than 10 European banks active in the new issue markets in Europe, to design exactly what is most useful to them,” he says.

The trading protocol is now live, operating an all-to-all trading model, with price-time priority, says Russell. “What we’ve launched today is a fully transparent central limit order book (CLOB), where members can post a price, click to trade it, counter it, come back and meet in the middle, and do all the things that you’d expect in a CLOB,” he says.

The company is now rolling out a phased approach to further electronify new-issue workflow, says Tregidgo. “In phase one, we’ve launched these two services of new issue announcements and new issue trading. In later phases of incremental improvement aiming to further electronify the market processes, we are planning to expand the asset classes we cover, beyond corporate investment grade bonds, and so forth. Also, we’re planning to expand the new issue announcement protocol to cover the order and allocation process, with the aim of delivering an interoperable, interconnected, end-to-end service for new issuance, linking syndicate desks and investors seamlessly.”

“We’re looking at this holistically across the lifecycle of the bond,” adds Russell. “From the initial stage of raising capital all the way through to when that bond retires. By being plugged in to the different parts of infrastructure all the way along, it will be seamless for our clients to move from the new issue announcement, to setting it up in their order management system, to trading in the grey market. We’ll have protocols for that whole feedback loop. And we can’t understate the seamlessness of stitching all of that together.”

The new offering will be complemented by the Liquidnet’s new fixed-income member service model, including a dedicated Trade Coverage team to provide specialised institutional expertise and insight designed to help members capitalise on trading opportunities.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: Enhancing trader efficiency with interoperability – Innovative solutions for automated and streamlined trader desktop and workflows

17 September 2025 10:00am ET | 3:00pm London | 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 Minutes Traders today are expected to navigate increasingly complex markets using workflows that often lag behind the pace of change. Disconnected systems, manual processes, and fragmented user experiences create hidden inefficiencies that directly impact performance and risk management. Firms that can streamline...

BLOG

Enhancing Trader Efficiency: Interoperability, Automation, and the Path to Smarter Desktops

In the face of intensifying demands on trading desks, the pressure to streamline workflows and enhance productivity has never been greater. So how can trading firms modernise the trader desktop without creating disruption? What’s the real return on investment for low-code, no-code, and interoperability tools? And how do firms balance build-versus-buy decisions when designing next-generation...

EVENT

Data Licensing Forum 2025

The Data Licensing Forum will explore industry trends, themes and specific developments relating to licensing of financial market data from Exchanges and Data Vendors.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...