Billy Hult, chief executive of Tradeweb Markets said the timing of the acquisition Trumid Holdings is “compelling” as it will allow the multi-asset electronic trading platform to cover the full bond lifecycle from trade inception to the secondary market on one platform and create a new differentiated capability for the industry.

On 19 October 2026 Tradeweb said in a statement that it agreed to buy electronic credit trading marketplace Trumid for $1.97bn. Hult spoke in a conference call about the acquisition on 20 October 2026 and said clients increasingly want better price discovery and more efficient execution around new issues.

“With a multi-year refinancing and artificial intelligence infrastructure cycle on the horizon, we believe the new issue market will remain front and center,” Hult added. “As electronification and velocity increase, we believe our opportunity expands.”

He argued that Tradeweb has an opportunity as global debt markets keep growing to fund the world economy, and technology is advancing faster than at any point in history.

As a result credit has become one of Tradeweb’s most important growth engines and is on track to exceed $500m in global revenues for the first time. Hult believes credit will continue to remain one of the largest markets with a long runway for growth, as the firm’s biggest competitor in credit is still the phone.

Hult said Tradeweb is making this acquisition as credit markets are in a “really strong spot” and the new issue market is “a really good neighborhood to invest into.”

He described the application of technology into professional markets as one of the most consequential secular trends in finance.

“If you believe in the force of the impact of technology and that markets will continue to grow, our opportunity is going to compound alongside this transformation,” Hult added.

Innovation

“Every time we make trading easier, reduce complexity or bring buyers and sellers together in a better way, we have an opportunity to move another piece of this market electronic,” Hult said. “Grey markets are particularly interesting to us.”

Grey markets are where price discovery begins before a bond has been officially issued. They comprise about 5% of trading volume, but much of the workflow is still manual. This led to Trumid developing Swarms, a protocol that brings a group of participants together on the same bond at the same moment, throughout the day. Tradeweb plans to introduce Swarms across its global credit network.

Mike Sobel, co-chief executive  and president of Trumid, said in a statement: “Together, we’ll build on what we’ve created, accelerate innovation, and deliver an even stronger and more intelligent trading experience for our combined networks of buy and sell-side clients globally.”

Hult added that Tradeweb has innovated in secondary and portfolio trading and moved from an “afterthought” in credit to close to $500m in revenue.

‘In a super-interesting way Trumid has innovated around making the market in greys more available to a wider audience and making that marketplace more transparent and more efficient,” said Hult.

He argued that the acquisition extends Tradeweb’s offering to the full lifecycle of a bond.

“Grey markets are where a bond’s trading life begins, and with Trumid we can serve clients from those first moments of price discovery all the way through the secondary market,” Hult added.

In addition, AI is becoming a more meaningful part of how credit trades. Tradeweb’s TARA AI chatbot turns the firm’s data into real-time insight for clients, while Trumid’s Smart Voice automates trades that still start on the phone by by converting unstructured conversations into pre-filled trade tickets in seconds.

“Trumid’s unique data from the earliest trading in a bond will help make Ai-Price and TARA sharper and our clients’ execution better,” added Hult.

Tradeweb’s Ai-Price is an automated bond pricing engine for U.S. investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds that integrates public data from TRACE, the U.S bond trade reporting platform, with the firm’s proprietary datasets.

Trumid became one of the innovative platforms in the space as it expanded into dealer RFQ (request for quotes) and Attributed Trading protocols that complement Tradedeweb’s own protocols, according to Hult. Trumid’s Attributed Trading protocol is a bilateral dealer-to-client protocol, enabling dealers to electronically distribute axes and inventory to curated client lists.

Hult said: “As we acquire these things, we are not going to lose sight of something that we are very excited about, which is what we get to build going forward with our new partners, such as more insight and analytics and electronifying voice-centric flows through AI.”

In June this year  Intercontinental Exchange announced an agreement to acquire MarketAxess Holdings, an electronic fixed income trading platform, for a total enterprise value of approximately $5.7bn. ICE said the combined company will offer clients a fully integrated workflow spanning pre-trade price discovery and analytics, multi-protocol electronic execution for both retail and institutional investors, and post-trade data, benchmarking, and compliance tools, all within a single connected platform.

Hult responded that Tradeweb embraces competition as it is good for clients.

“We have shown time and time again that we can compete and win in tough environments against against tough competition,” he said. “We feel very strongly that Trumid fits us and provides us with some of the most attractive places to grow in credit.”

Financials

Sara Furber, chief financial officer of Tradeweb, said on the call that the transaction meets the firm’s financial objectives, including being accretive in the first year after closing.

The transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of Tradeweb and Trumid, and is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals. It is targeted to close in the first half of 2027.

The $1.97bn transaction will be financed with $1.89bn in cash and $82m in equity. The cash portion of the consideration is expected to be funded primarily through cash on hand. Furber said the firm has more than $2bn of cash on the balance sheet, has no debt and produces $1bn of free cash flow each year.

Furber added: “We see real upside to both Trumid’s ability to compete in grey markets and gross secondary revenue, which has been an increasing source of their growth.”

She described the client overlap as “pretty small” between TradeWeb and Trumid and said this is one of the things the firm is most excited about.

“Historically, we’ve scaled in U.S. credit through achieving greater penetration with asset managers than hedge funds and Trumid’s client base really leans the other way,” said Furber. “They have built an incredibly loyal following amongst hedge funds, many of which are newer to our platform and trade with us less actively.”

On the dealer side, Trumid’s activity should deepen the liquidity that those dealers bring to Tradeweb’s network. Approximately 40% of Trumid’s revenue comes from its anonymous RFQ protocol, which Furber said complements Tradeweb’s RFQ, which is primarily displayed.

“When we put it together, we’re really expecting a broader client network and deeper pools of liquidity, which is good for clients, particularly in grey markets among systematic hedge fund clients,” she added.

Hult described Tradeweb as “best in class” in the asset manager base and said he likes the combination of clients from the deal. In addition, he said the deal allows Tradeweb to put more resources towards the next frontiers in credit as a result of the acquisition, which are emerging markets, algorithmic trading and block trading.

“It lets us move faster,” said Hult. “We would otherwise have spent resources building and scaling these capabilities ourselves.”

Morgan Stanley is exclusive financial advisor to Tradeweb and Goldman Sachs is exclusive financial advisor to Trumid. Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett are legal advisors for Tradeweb. Latham & Watkins is legal advisor for Trumid.

Very much agree with Jeremie of course. $TW was already taking share from $MKTX like clockwork, after $MKTX agreed to be acquired by $ICE, there was some worry that ICE/MKTX complex would be a more formidable competitor in U.S. credit.

But now, as TW has been #1 by volume… https://t.co/EuLY9BJYEF

— Welfare Capital (Jack) (@Pray4Equity) October 20, 2026