ICAP, a leading markets operator, is once again merging business units in a bid to streamline operations, offering a unified brand and integrated trading solutions to its clients.
Late last year, the financial markets and trading provider merged two of its key business units, EBS and BrokerTec, creating an all-in-one FX and fixed income trading solution. And just this week, the company announced that it will be folding MyTreasury, an established Money Market Fund (MMF) platform for the corporate treasury community, into the EBS BrokerTec product portfolio.
The move is part of ICAP’s broader strategy to expand its range of products and to harness synergies between its subsidiaries.
The move is part of ICAP’s broader strategy to expand its range of products and to harness synergies between its subsidiaries. Accordingly, corporates using the MyTreasury platform will also be able to trade in FX later in the year under the “EBS Treasury” brand, while EBS BrokerTec will benefit from an enlarged product offering to include MMF products and an expanded customer base of corporate users.
The range of trading products under the EBS BrokerTec umbrella is now set to include fixed income offerings of US and European fixed income products, including US Treasuries, European Government Bonds and European Repo, as well as access to inter-dealer FX markers and MMF products, such as debt securities.
In terms of the new EBS Treasury platform, ICAP announced that the full FX offering for corporates will launch later this year, subject to regulatory approval. Eight banks and ten corporates have signed up to participate in the beta launch. "EBS Treasury will support FX spot, forwards and swaps, leveraging FX pricing from EBS Direct – EBS BrokerTec’s disclosed bilateral FX Trading Platform . Trades will be executed via a streamed Request for Quote (RFQ) model, a new addition to EBS Direct’s Execution functionality, which will allow banks to stream tailored prices to corporates.”
Commenting on the new venture, Justin Meadows, CEO at MyTreasury, said: “The merger of the MyTreasury platform with the EBS BrokerTec business will allow us to bring together the existing strength of EBS BrokerTec’s robust infrastructure and MyTreasury’s footprint and expertise in the corporate space to provide the corporate community with integrated FX and MMF trading through a single screen.”
The integration is an exciting development as it supports our overall strategy to diversify our customer base and strengthen our multi-product offering.
Gil Mandelzis, CEO, EBS BrokerTec, said: “The integration of the MyTreasury business with EBS BrokerTec is an exciting development as it supports our overall strategy to diversify our customer base and strengthen our multi-product offering, which will continue to expand further in 2015 and 2016.”
Finally, ICAP's Group Chief Executive Officer, Michael Spencer, said: "This is an exciting development, as it grows our addressable market across multiple dimensions: servicing corporate clients and expanding its offering into Money Market Funds. In addition, MyTreasury has been a small standalone company within the ICAP Group for a number of years. The merging of the MyTreasury business into EBS BrokerTec is another step in our programme to fully integrate and align the capabilities across the ICAP Group, realizing significant revenue and cost synergies and leveraging the full scale of our products and services."
