S&P Dow Jones Indices ('S&P DJI'), a leading provider of financial market indices, has entered into a strategic partnership with MarketAxess (Nasdaq: MKTX), an operator of electronic Trading Platform for fixed-income securities, in a bid to jointly develop indices to track the most liquid segments of the corporate bond market in the US, according to a S&P statement.
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The new partnership between the two venues will look to herald a new wave of indices touching on the US corporate bond market, one of the largest in the world. In particular, both S&P Dow Jones Indices and MarketAxess will be lending their respective expertise to push a new offering of sub-indices of the S&P 500 Bond Index.
As such, the joint offering will help enable the overall marketplace to better identify and track liquid bonds across a variety of specifications, including quality range and sector. This will include the cohesion of MarketAxess’ Liquidity data sets with S&P DJI's indexing capabilities – both groups are anticipating the rollout of the new indices in Q1 2017.
Investor Growth Fueling Offering
Alex Matturri
According to Alex Matturri, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a recent statement on the agreement, "Investor demand for U.S. corporate bonds continues to show strength, and due to this growth, liquidity has emerged as a top-of-mind interest.”
“As American companies continue issuing debt in a low interest-rate environment, it is becoming increasingly important for investors to have access to robust information on the U.S. corporate bond market that offers sophisticated insights into its behavior. We are pleased to collaborate with MarketAxess, and we look forward to providing a new level of transparency to this segment of the fixed-income marketplace,” he added.
"Few factors are more critical than liquidity in sizing up opportunities and managing risk in today's corporate bond markets. We believe investors will find significant strategic value in indices that incorporate a dynamic view of liquidity conditions,” noted Nick Themelis, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of MarketAxess, in an accompanying statement.
