LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BGC Partners, Inc. (Nasdaq: BGCP) (“BGC”), a leading global intermediary to the wholesale financial markets, announces its first fully electronic UK Sterling Interest Rate Swap (IRS) trade using BGC’s award-winning Volume Match tool on the BGC™ Trader platform.
Volume Match is integrated into BGC’s proprietary platform, BGC Trader and, at pre-set times during the day, offers customers auction-style electronic trading across a wide range of asset classes including credit default swaps, foreign exchange options, precious metals and interest rate swaps.
Phil Norton, Executive Managing Director and Global Head of e-Commerce, said: “The launch of our fully electronic Sterling IRS capability follows the addition last week of Australian Dollar IRS, and reflects the continuation of our strategy to support BGC’s strong voice franchises with the BGC Trader and Volume Match technologies. By offering our clients a choice between fully electronic or broker-managed execution, we are providing them with the flexibility to trade according to their preference. We now offer complete end to end electronic execution across 75 out of approximately 200 BGC products, and intend to add further products as client demand continues.”
Peter Kilford, Head of Sterling Swaps at BGC Partners in London added: “Sterling IRS is the latest addition to a large suite of fully electronic Interest Rate Derivative products. The recent launch of Sterling IRS reflects the growing demand for electronic trading and we believe that our e-trading capability will enhance BGC’s presence in the Sterling market place.”
About BGC™ Trader
BGC Trader is BGC’s proprietary multi-asset, integrated voice and electronic price execution platform for the inter-bank and broker community. Introduced through extensive customer feedback, BGC Trader offers a feature-filled, flexible and easy to use front-end. Users benefit from thin-client technology, which allows improved delivery with managed product updates and enhancements, speed, availability and resilience.
BGC Trader is fully integrated with a choice of either voice or electronic access to support multiple products including:
- Fixed income
- European corporate cash
- FX Options
- Credit default swaps
- i-Traxx
BGC’s platform is regulated as a multilateral trading facility (MTF) by the FSA and adheres to the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive.
About BGC™ Volume Match
Volume Match is an application within the BGC Trader platform. Volume Match is an anonymous auction-style trading system, which provides customers with efficient price discovery, order management and execution in credit and FX derivative products. It is run multiple times per day for multiple products depending on market demand:
- At specific times and set price levels the market can execute trades anonymously
- Volume Match runs for approximately 5 minutes, several times per day
- At the conclusion of the Volume Match, only those participating will be aware of their transactions
- All unfilled interest remains undisclosed to the marketplace – which aims to remove execution risk
In some markets Volume Match offers an additional price discovery tool allowing traders themselves to post two-way prices. With this additional step, the mid-price is established by the market rather than being inputted by the broker. This offers significantly increased price transparency and efficiency of execution in certain markets.
Volume Match is deployed using Citrix, and is hosted by BGC.
About BGC Partners, Inc.
BGC Partners is a leading global intermediary to the wholesale financial markets, specializing in the brokering of a broad range of financial products, including fixed income securities, interest rate swaps, foreign exchange, equities, equity derivatives, credit derivatives, commodities, futures, structured products and other instruments. BGC Partners also provides a full range of services, including trade execution, broker-dealer services, clearing, processing, information, and other back office services to a broad range of financial and non-financial institutions. BGC Partners’ integrated platform is designed to provide flexibility to customers with regard to price discovery, execution and processing of transactions, and enables them to use voice, hybrid, or, where available, fully electronic brokerage services in connection with transactions executed either OTC or through an exchange.
Through its eSpeed and BGC Trader brands, BGC Partners uses its proprietary, built, and paid for technology to operate multiple buyer, multiple seller real-time electronic marketplaces for the world’s most liquid capital markets. The Company’s pioneering suite of tools provides end-to-end transaction solutions for the purchase and sale of financial products over its global private network or via the Internet. BGC Partners’ neutral platform, reliable network, straight-through processing and superior products make it the trusted source for electronic trading for the world's largest financial firms. Through its BGCantor Market Data brand, the Company also offers globally distributed and innovative market data and analysis products for numerous financial instruments and markets. BGC Partners’ customers include many of the world’s largest banks, broker-dealers, investment banks, trading firms, hedge funds, governments and investment firms.
BGC’s partnership structure and extensive employee ownership create a distinctive competitive advantage among its peers. Named after fixed income trading innovator B. Gerald Cantor, BGC Partners has offices in 24 cities, located in New York and London, as well as in Aspen, Beijing, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dubai, Garden City, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Moscow, Nyon, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Sarasota, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Toronto, West Palm Beach.
For more information, visit http://www.bgcpartners.com. The Company’s corporate address is: BGC Partners, Inc., 499 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10022.