Credit Suisse First Boston, Lehman Brothers, and UBS Warburg, have agreed to join BondBook, a registered Alternative Trading System (ATS) that provides anonymous trading of US investment grade and high yield corporate bonds and investment grade sovereign debt securities. The news coincides with the initial launch among 14 investment management and banking firms of the BondBook electronic marketplace.
John Kim, chief executive officer of BondBook, comments: "With the addition of these three industry leading sponsors and the successful launch of our trading platform, we are now aggressively moving ahead to systematically bring additional institutions online."
Initial transaction volume has been strong, says Gustavo Larramendi, chief operating officer of BondBook. "Trading volume passed the $2.5 billion mark before the end of April," he says. "As we expand our rollout to bring more institutions online, we expect that trading volume will grow rapidly."
All of BondBook's eight sponsoring firms have made commitments to trade on the electronic platform, he says, including their lead-managed new corporate bond issues once they are available for secondary trading.
BondBook was initially established as a joint venture between Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Salomon Smith Barney and Deutsche Bank