Hong Kong Bond Trading Portals Merge

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

02 May 2002

Hong Kong bond trading portal BondsInAsia.com (BIA) announced yesterday that it would take over its rival Asiabondportal.com to improve trading liquidity and create other economies of scale. The merger will bring most of Hong Kong's biggest bond dealers to one electronic trading platform.

Asiabondportal.com said it would stop operating from yesterday; in January the company about 40 of its 60 employees were laid off.

Some of Asiabondportal's shareholder banks will participate in BIA, including ABN Amro, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. They will join BIA's current shareholder group of BNP Paribas, Citigroup, CSFB, Deutsche Bank, HKEx, HSBC and Reuters.

BondsInAsia Chief Executive Officer Albert Cobetto said "This significant strategic move is consistent with the global experience in bond trading platforms where the market evolves and consolidates to capture their maximum potential. We look forward to welcoming and working with the new dealers and institutional investors for the benefit of all Asian market participants."

Francis Tjia, CEO of asiabondportal said "We are pleased that this occasion has presented itself, one where mutual benefits arise for all the parties involved. This new initiative will definitely increase the profile of electronic bond trading in the Asian region and bring an ideal solution to the Asian bond markets."

BondsInAsia Chairman and Citibank Financial Markets Head of Hong Kong and China Eddie Tan said "This opportunity will benefit the fixed income markets in Asia by aggregating all the liquidity providers onto one trading system for price discovery, trade execution and processing. It is a positive move and one which will further accelerate the developing Asian bond market."

BondsInAsiaTM is the leading electronic trading platform for Asian fixed income securities. BondsInAsia's proprietary trading technology interlinks the region's leading fixed income players with major buy-side institutions. The company's technology platform allows market makers to efficiently and instantaneously trade bonds within the professional markets as well as for Dealers to privately trade with their buy-side clients. Currently, the platform facilitates trading of Asian government and corporate debt securities in the HKD, SGD, USD, Yen and Euro currencies. In 2002, the company intends to expand into additional Asian local currency bond markets as well as to develop electronic trading platforms for other fixed income related products.

BondsInAsia, which was set up in 2000 but rolled out its services last year, had executed nearly US$3 billion in transactions so far this year, Mr Cobetto said. "The business is growing at an exponential rate," he said.

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