With 17 dealers committed to the platform and over $60bn of gross notional and twelve thousand line items, referencing over 8 thousand ISIN’s across IG/HY/EM and Covered bonds and 20 CCY’s, Neptune is fast expanding from its initial focus of purely European IG/HY corporate bonds, to a portfolio which also reflects the global nature and reach of its user base.

Paul Nokes, CEO, Fidessa Buy-side, commented: "With the markets undergoing fundamental change, initiatives like Neptune that help buy-sides discover liquidity and price information for fixed income instruments are a big step forward in enabling investment managers to access these markets. The industry still has a long way to go, though, and the next challenge to solve is a consolidated feed of the 90 or so fragmented pricing mechanisms that exist."

"Extending the market information offered through our Minerva OMS to include the Neptune network is just one of the many steps Fidessa has taken to enable our customers to trade the corporate bond markets efficiently," concluded Nokes.

Neptune offers a commoditised and open standard FIX network that allows banks and investors to exchange controlled and targeted real-time axe and inventory using a robust data governance model that minimises unintended information leakage. By focusing on the creation of a technology utility to exchange this information directly between market participants, Neptune enables greater transparency of trading interests across the marketplace between buyers and sellers of bonds - usually banks and investors such as fund managers, pension funds and asset managers.

The Neptune network helps asset managers connect to the sell-side via any combination of the Neptune GUI, their own in-house developed OMS or an external OMS provider such as Fidessa. The flexibility of connectivity options means they will be receiving pre-trade indications from multiple banks in real time through a single connection that can be integrated into their own in-house workflows.

Grant Wilson, Partner, Etrading Software, said: “We are pleased to have our first external OMS connected to Neptune and we look forward to partnering with further providers in the coming weeks and months as we continue to expand access to the platform. Enhancing the flow of electronic pre-trade information has been a focus of market participants for many years. For Neptune to have achieved this in a relatively short period of time is testament both to our core principles of standardisation and also to the tremendous support we have had from banks and asset managers who have collaborated closely with us and each other, in order to create an open standard, technology-based, non-profit utility.”

As more participants join and the quantity of data increases, it is a core principle of the Neptune network to maintain the quality of the data. Neptune’s unique combination of data ownership, open-standard technology and collaboration creates an environment where the sell-side is comfortable delivering high quality, structured data to their clients. This quality will continue to be a core focus for the Neptune utility as the participants and data on the network grow.

Sassan Danesh, Partner, Etrading Software, said: “We are delighted to see Neptune’s use of FIX open standards for connectivity, data aggregation and workflow integration being leveraged by vendors to provide their clients with the high quality, market-wide, aggregated data the buy-side is demanding.”

Formulated by Etrading Software and a group of over 40 banks and asset managers in 2014, Neptune has continued to garner industry momentum as market participants see the benefits of collaboration within this network utility. The Project has widespread support from leading players in the market such as: BARCLAYS BANK PLC, BANCO BILBAO VIZCAYA ARGENTARIA S.A., BNP PARIBAS, COMMERZBANK AG, CREDIT AGRICOLE CORPORATE AND INVESTMENT BANK S.A., CREDIT SUISSE INTERNATIONAL, GOLDMAN SACHS INTERNATIONAL, HSBC BANK PLC, JP MORGAN, MORGAN STANLEY & CO INTERNATIONAL PLC, RBC CAPITAL MARKETS LLC, BANCO SANTANDER S.A., SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE & UBS AG LONDON BRANCH.