A group of ten investment banks have joined forces to form LiquidityHub, a central fixed income pricing aggregator which is initially being introduced for dealer-to-client prices on euro and dollar interest rate swaps and US Treasurys.
The founding banks in the project are Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS. The consortium has come together against a background of increasing automation in the swaps market.
The LiquidityHub partners are in discussions with possible price distributors, including electronic execution platforms and market data vendors, although specific details have not been disclosed.
The firms are also understood to be talking to IT vendors regarding the technology required for the hub.
The service is expected to launch in late 2006.