MarketAxess-ITG Partnership
January 5, 2009
Addressing client demands for cross-asset-class tools to measure best execution, agency brokerage Investment Technology Group (ITG), which focuses on equities and equity derivatives, has announced that it is integrating its transaction cost analysis (TCA) offering with fixed-income trading platform MarketAxess' compliance suite.
The companies' combined TCA and compliance services span equities, investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds, emerging market bonds and Eurobonds.
New York-based ITG is taking "a first step in extending our transaction-cost capabilities across asset classes," said Ian Domowitz, the firm's managing director for networking and analytical and research products. "This is probably the best example of an area where we would go into partnership as opposed to trying to develop our own."
MarketAxess' compliance tools--offered through its Corporate BondTicker data service--let customers quantify best execution and review credit trading activity, trade exceptions, dealer performance and archived reports.
"As institutional investors continue to look for compliance solutions to monitor their trading activity across asset classes, aligning our capabilities with ITG is an exciting development for us and our clients," said Richard McVey, chairman and CEO of New York-based MarketAxess, in a statement. "Bringing together market leadership and technology resources in our respective asset classes, our alliance with ITG is highly complementary."
According to Domowitz, ITG was spurred by calls from global clients to expand its asset class coverage. The firm began talking to MarketAxess "based on this perceived demand for a fixed-income product and the notion that it might be able to be supplied very quickly to that client base," he said. Pointing to the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, which mandates best execution across all asset classes, Domowitz said that interest was strong in Europe.
Clients, he said, will be able to directly access ITG's TCA products through MarketAxess. ITG says its equities analytics help clients optimize fund performance through global transaction cost assessment, peer group comparison and performance measurement. ITG users access the system via a Web portal or the firm's execution management systems.
