Tradeweb Wins Big in 2019

2019 has certainly been an exciting year for Tradeweb, packed with impressive numbers.

In April, we went public with the year’s top performing IPO over $1 billion, followed by an additional offering in October to raise in total $2.1 billion. Our traded volumes have kept on rising, facilitating more than $730 billion each day in rates, credit, equities and money market transactions globally. We traded more than $1 trillion on 19 days so far, and experienced new records in almost every business in which we operate, including repo and equity derivatives, which are up 27% and 63% on 2018, respectively.

In China, we celebrated the second anniversary of our Bond Connect platform, with more than $400 billion traded and new functionality developed. We enhanced our block allocation solution, and introduced list trading, dealer streaming prices and CFETS’ iDeal messaging tool. We also became the first – and still only - Bond Connect platform offering automated trading for Chinese Bonds.

Our robust and extensive market data was once again in the spotlight, with the launch of the Tradeweb ICE U.S. Treasury Closing Prices, designed to represent the daily market mid-price for U.S. Treasury securities. Building on the success of Tradeweb’s UK Gilt closing prices, we leveraged our high-quality pricing data to introduce a trusted benchmark that financial firms can use to manage investment portfolios and evaluate the fair value of securities.

In Credit, we became the first electronic marketplace to support portfolio trading, not just for U.S., but also for European and Emerging Markets bonds. So far, we’ve facilitated more than $35 billion in portfolio credit trades in the U.S. alone, with single transactions as large as $1 billion in notional value. Furthermore, we witnessed our share of total high grade TRACE volumes rise to 15.7%, as we pushed on with our efforts to make markets more interconnected and transparent.

This year, we also expanded our direct streams capabilities for on-the-run U.S. Treasuries, enabling clients to consume firm two-way prices, while minimizing pre- and post-trade information leakage. Our wholesale business, Dealerweb, has seen a rapid uptake of our session-based trading platform Sweep, which is now available across 10 products globally. Meanwhile, our retail business, Tradeweb Direct, integrated with Investortools to better support municipal bond trading between institutions and retail investors.

Media outlets took notice and as a result, we’ve received several industry awards in recognition of our innovation, client service and extensive network. Our latest accolade came from the editorial staff at Risk magazine, who named Tradeweb ‘OTC Trading Platform of the Year’ for our leadership in the global derivatives space. The award was the culmination of a three-month judging process, which took into account factors such as creativity and innovation, risk management, liquidity provision, quality of service and customer satisfaction, as well as engagement with regulatory issues.

Thanks to the launch of innovative functionality such as multi-asset package (MAP) trading, the integration of margin optimization analytics from Cassini Systems and OpenGamma, our expanded coverage of Emerging Markets currencies, and the continued adoption of our Automated Intelligent Execution (AiEX) tool, Tradeweb stood out from its competitors to emerge the winner of its trading platform category.

Just a week before the Risk Awards, Tradeweb was named ‘Outstanding Fixed Income Trading Venue’ and our CEO Lee Olesky was honoured with the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ prize at the Trade’s Leaders in Trading Awards. In 2019 we were also recognized by publications such as Waters Technology, Financial News, GlobalCapital and ETF Express for our TCA solution, fixed income trading venue, SEF, and ETF platform.

As we prepare for the New Year, we’re staying focused on further enhancing our clients’ trading experience and expanding the scope of instruments they can trade on our platform. After all, we wouldn’t be able to win these awards without their continued support of our business. Also, a big thank you to all our employees for their hard work throughout 2019, making sure that Tradeweb remains the hub of innovation, connectivity and efficiency for electronic trading!