The platforn will be powered by Cantor's electronic trading arm, eSpeed.

During the initial roll-out phase, primary dealers will be able to execute and process overnight and term specials, treasury bills, and off-the-run treasury repo trades either electronically or through voice broking capabilities.

BGC says it intends to go live with the platform early in the first quarter of 2006.

Later in the year, phase two of the roll-out will enable primary dealers to execute voice or electronic trades for additional repo asset classes, including general collateral and mortgage-backed securities.

Philip Norton, head of e-commerce at BGC, says: "Launching an integrated voice and electronic US Dollar repo trading platform for the primary dealer community makes perfect sense, as it is a complex market with high volumes requiring fast execution and trade processing.

"BGC's proven capability as an inter-dealer voice broker coupled with eSpeed's leading proprietary trading technology will provide the primary dealer community with a significant value proposition."

Cantor rival Icap is expected to combine its repo voice brokering operations with its BrokerTec electronic trading platform to provide a similar integrated system to primary dealers, also in the new year.

In a related move Tullett Prebon is looking to play catch up with eSpeed and BrokerTec with the January launch of all-electronic inter-dealer broking system, TradeBlade. The new system has been developed to meet the needs of institutional fixed income dealers and will initially be used to trade dollar-based repos.