Electronic Fixed Income Trading Venues OpenBondX and Direct Match to Join Forces

NEW YORK and MIAMI BEACH, Fla., Dec. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Electronic bond Alternative Trading System (ATS) OpenBondX, LLC (www.openbondx.com) intends to consolidate with Direct Match Holdings Inc (www.directmatch.com), an electronic marketplace for U.S. Treasuries. The united OpenBondX Direct Match Platform will remain a true "all-to-all" system for trading between all types of market participants—including dealers, proprietary trading firms, and institutional customers.

Institutional bond traders will benefit from more transparent, efficient and cheaper access to a wider range of fixed income trading opportunities. The OpenBondX Direct Match Platform expects to introduce central limit order book (CLOB) trading in on-the-run U.S. Treasuries in Q1 2017, followed by U.S. corporate bonds. The firm already has secured a centralized clearing partner for FICC and non-FICC U.S. Treasury customers.

OpenBondX cofounder and CEO Alistair Brown will serve as CEO, while Direct Match cofounder and CEO Jim Greco will serve as Head of Rates and CTO. Former Direct Edge CEO William O'Brien will have the same role at OpenBondX that he had at Direct Match as Executive Chairman. Direct Match investors, Roger Ehrenberg from IA Ventures and Dan Ciporin from Canaan Partners, will continue as board members in the combined firm.

From their inception, both firms shared the same mission of leveraging technology to enable institutional bond traders to quickly discover available liquidity and trade with counterparties in an anonymous, secure and conflict-free marketplace open to all participants. 

Engineered by the same financial markets visionaries who built Lime Brokerage, OpenBondX is the only all-to-all bond trading platform that offers RFFQ® (Request for Firm Quote®) and RFQ order protocols, no platform fees, and low, transparent transaction pricing. Additional features include centralized clearing, price improvement efficiencies, disclosed or anonymous trading, built-in risk management controls, and user connectivity via secure web browser, FIX API, and Microsoft Excel.

"In short, OpenBondX is flexible, easy to use, and builds in unique incentives to appeal to the widest mix of traders, all at the lowest pricing in the market," affirms CEO Alistair Brown.

Direct Match created the first all-to-all anonymous CLOB in the U.S. Treasury market, with automated tools enabling clients to achieve best execution. "Our execution tools and protocols were built to allow users to own and manage their execution as they see fit," explains founder Jim Greco. "This includes the ability to work orders, to have direct market access, to build or employ execution logic/algorithms, and to access a transparent source of market data as means to perform Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA)," he adds.

About OpenBondX
OpenBondX, LLC (OBX) is a fully electronic, "all-to-all" Alternative Trading System (ATS) that provides all participants with fair and equal access to the bond markets, absolute price transparency, rebates and low pricing, disclosed or anonymous trading and built-in risk management controls—all with no platform access fees. Hedge funds, asset managers, institutional investors, quant traders, banks, broker-dealers and other participants can seamlessly and anonymously trade bonds with one another on an equal playing field. Our hallmark is firm and final pricing, empowered by our innovative RFFQ® (Request for Firm Quote®) matching protocol which enables participants to more efficiently tap into hidden prices and competing quotes.

Based in the U.S., OBX was founded by internationally recognized finance and electronic trading veterans to bring the advantages of electronification and the opportunities for market-based price discovery to the institutional bond markets. As an independently-owned ATS, OBX operates without bias, background agendas, asymmetric relationships or hidden transaction costs. For more information, visit www.openbondx.com

RFFQ® and Request For Firm Quote® are trademarks of OpenBondX, LLC

About Direct Match
Direct Match was founded by Jim Greco, former Getco (now KCG) trader/developer, who launched its U.S. Treasuries venue. The leadership team combines unique sales and trading experience with a powerful knowledge of Fixed Income electronic trading.

Media Contacts:
LA Marketing & Communications (www.lafinancialmarketing.com)
Anne Aldrich:  +1.312.787.1642
[email protected] 
Mike Felix:  +1.917.289.1119
[email protected]

SOURCE OpenBondX, LLC