– Provides alternative trading method for Bloomberg SEF participants to reduce overall capital costs and improve operational efficiencies
Bloomberg announced today that its multi-asset swap execution facility, Bloomberg SEF LLC, launched a List trading tool for Interest Rate Swaps (IRS). The new List tool enables market participants to improve operational efficiency by creating and sending a “basket” of swaps that can be traded at a single price using Bloomberg SEF’s request for quote (RFQ) functionality. Bloomberg’s swaps analytics coupled with Bloomberg SEF’s liquidity provide the first market solution for participants that wish to perform advanced portfolio valuation prior to execution.
The List tool also allows clients to offset cleared risk, which reduces the number of existing trades and overall capital costs. “We are always focused on adding value for the more than 900 Bloomberg SEF participants,” said Ben Macdonald, Bloomberg’s Global Head of Product and President of Bloomberg SEF LLC. “The new List tool gives our global customers an alternative way to trade swaps that provides flexibility in managing capital exposure and improves operational efficiency. Bloomberg is uniquely positioned to provide customers with a complete solution, providing risk analytics along with execution tools.”
Asset manager NISA Investment Advisors, LLC (NISA), supported by futures commission merchant Morgan Stanley, executed the first package trade using Bloomberg’s List tool. Four leading financial institutions — BofA Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo –responded with a price. Since then, more than $1 billion in transactions have been completed on Bloomberg SEF using the List tool.
“Bloomberg has been a valued partner in SEF trading and we will continue to work together to build technological tools that enable NISA to access as much liquidity as possible for our clients,” said Ken Lester, NISA’s Managing Director of Portfolio Management. “We are pleased with how easily Bloomberg’s List tool seamlessly integrated with our proprietary technology systems,” added Sergi Turabelidze of NISA.
The List tool can be used to terminate existing cleared positions, re-balance a portfolio or create a custom package of new trades and execute on net present value (NPV). Participants benefit from downstream trade processing as individual “legs” are sent for real-time clearing and automatically fed into the counterparties’ risk system, eliminating the need for manual trade booking.
Bloomberg SEF is the leader in dealer-to-client SEF trading with more than $8 trillion in transactions since launching in October 2013. A variety of global market participants, including banks, asset managers, hedge funds, corporations, insurance companies and pension funds, comprise Bloomberg SEF’s participant base.
