The agreement signals the continued growth and strength of T-Zero's Trade Affirmation Platform, which now hosts a significant number of clients and connected partners, including inter-dealer broker BGC, Bloomberg, numerous banks, buy-side participants, and downstream operations service providers such as DTCC Deriv/SERV and GlobeOp, Calypso and Thunderhead.

In addition, T-Zero expects another five major banks to be using the service shortly, highlighting the huge potential when combined with the present participation of 80 buy-side firms, a number which is now growing almost daily.

Launched in July 2005, T-Zero provides "agnostic connectivity" and the benefits of accurate trade capture to a wide range of market participants, including inter-dealer brokers, buy-side firms, prime brokers and service providers. T-Zero's established platform will enable BGC to take advantage of these benefits, and give its dealers the ability to execute and affirm efficient bank-to-bank transactions with a real time link to the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC).

BGC will initially utilise T-Zero's post-trade technology for CDS single names and CDS Indices and Tranche trades.

Simon Morris, Head of European Credit Trading at Goldman Sachs said "The ability for us to confirm BGC trades straight through to DTCC, via T-Zero's application, is another big step forward in the automation of the growing credit derivative market"

Mark Beeston, president of T-Zero, said, "The addition of BGC to the T-Zero service is testament to our widening footprint in the CDS market and signals the ever increasing adoption of our platform. BGC's endorsement provides further evidence that ours is the agnostic solution of choice for leading derivatives participants."

Philip Norton, Managing Director and Head of e-Commerce at BGC Partners commented: "T-Zero's post-trade capabilities are now well established in the marketplace. Their dealer support and connectivity means BGC can fully leverage its own relationships with banks and provide greater certainty, transparency and accountability for CDS trades."

The announcement comes amid calls from regulators to improve operational efficiencies in credit derivatives. Most recently, the New York Federal Reserve convened a group of the 14 largest banks in September 2005 to discuss credit derivative market practices. More recently, former U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan reiterated those concerns calling the backlog of unconfirmed trades "unconscionable" stating that many trades "could be confirmed instantaneously" using available technology.