TradingScreen said Thursday it will develop a multilateral trading facility for European corporate bonds.

The new platform, named Galaxy, will follow specifications issued by the Cassiopeia Committee on April 26, TradingScreen said. Galaxy will be open to any regulated institutional participant authorized to trade corporate securities in Europe.

The corporate bond trading platform, which will operate as an online service, will accept only firm orders and aggregate them in a global order book. Prices will be viewable by all participants. Post trade information and transaction records will be made available publicly. Galaxy will be equipped with a compliance monitoring system.

Clearing of securities traded on the platform will be handled by LCH Clearnet SA, with links to the major national and international securities depositories.

"The Buy side and the Sell side alike are looking for the next step in terms of efficiency for the large corporate bond market. The current venues are not providing the answers to systemic liquidity issues, the cost of secondary market market-making and the increasing transactional costs. This new venture objective is to rally the participants around a model that dramatically improves the current system and brings benefits to all,'' said Philippe Buhannic, CEO of TradingScreen, based in London.

TradingScreen's existing Web technology services more than 1,700 institutional investors, 900 broker dealers and banks around the world. Market participants will be able to access the Galaxy corporate bond platform through TradingScreen's desktop software and TradeFIX, TradingScreen's FIX gateway or any of the leading execution management systems(EMS) or order management systems (OMS).

Securities Technology Monitor, August 5, 2010