Bloomberg Breaks $1Trillion Record for Electronic Swaps Trading in 2011

With plans to register as a swaps execution facility in 2011, Bloomberg's fixed income platform is seeing extensive participation from 23 dealers and 450 buy-side firms in interest-rate and credit default swaps trading.

Preparing for the launch of a swaps execution facility (SEF) under the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, Bloomberg fixed-Income trading executives today announced that they have broken through the $1 trillion mark in electronically traded interest-rate swaps and credit default swaps for 2011.

More than 16,000 trades have been executed on Bloomberg's Fixed-Income Trading (FIT) platform so far this year, with 23 dealers and more than 450 buy-side participants. This represents a 50 percent increase in fixed income trading volume in our system over the last year, the company said.

"We are setting record-breaking volumes and experiencing remarkable growth, thanks to strong participation from an extensive list of buy-side and sell-side participants," commented Ben Macdonald, Bloomberg Global Head of Fixed-Income, in the release. "This success positions us well to be the industry's leading Swap Execution Facility." Bloomberg intends to register with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a swaps execution facility or SEF and Security Based SEF (SBSEF) respectively, as required by the Dodd-Frank Act.

“Our electronic trading tools for over-the-counter derivatives and our central clearing links will be the backbone of our SEF offering,” Macdonald further stated. "Meanwhile, we are still seeing strong growth in our voice confirmation trading (VCON)."

Building on Bloomberg’s central Counterparty connectivity Launch in 2009, all trades executed on Bloomberg FIT can be routed directly to CME Clearing, the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), the International Derivatives Clearing Group (IDCG) and LCH.Clearnet Ltd. Bloomberg now has 23 liquidity providers active for IRS trading, and 11 dealers live for CDS trading. Following the partnership and initial launch of IRS trading with Barclays Capital’s BARX platform in 2003, additional dealers participating on FIT include : BBVA, BNP Paribas, BofA Merrill Lynch, Credit Agricole CIB, Citigroup, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan , Morgan Stanley, Natixis, Nomura Securities International,, RBS, Société Générale, Standard Chartered, UBS and West LB. Following the partnership and initial launch of CDS indices trading with J.P. Morgan’s JPTE Platform in 2009, the additional CDS Dealers participating on FIT are: BNP Paribas, Barclays Capital, BofA Merrill Lynch , Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, RBS, and UBS.

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