Virtu Financial, Inc. and MarketAxess Holdings, Inc., two global leaders in electronic trading, today announced a partnership to provide institutions with enhanced trading tools and access to global exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and fixed income securities.  The effort, which includes the distribution of Virtu’s streaming eNAV ETF fair value offering, is expected to launch in the third quarter.

The partnership will provide:

• Global, multi-asset and multi-currency coverage to MarketAxess and Virtu RFQ-hub clients
• Disclosed and anonymous ETF trading via a request-for-quote protocol
• Virtu’s real-time eNAV, a streaming fair value tool for ETFs
• Superior, real-time trade analytics supported by the MarketAxess award-winning Composite+ (CP+) algorithmic pricing tool and Virtu’s comprehensive suite of TCA tools

Virtu Financial is a leading financial technology firm that delivers liquidity to the global markets and innovative, transparent trading solutions to buy-side and sell-side institutions.  Virtu recently acquired ITG to create a premier agency execution and broker neutral workflow and analytics franchise.  Virtu’s RFQ-hub is a market leader in equity derivatives and structured products and is active in ETFs.  MarketAxess is the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, and the provider of market data and post-trade services for the global fixed-income markets.

“We are pleased to partner with Virtu to deliver institutional investors a new, cost-efficient, secure solution for achieving quality execution in ETFs,” MarketAxess President Chris Concannon said.  “ETFs have grown quickly to become an integral feature of the liquidity landscape in global credit markets.  Our entry into ETF trading with Virtu is a natural extension of our success with Open Trading™, now established as the preferred all-to-all trading solution in the credit markets.”

“This exciting and complementary partnership combines MarketAxess’s leading fixed-income platform with Virtu’s global multi-asset class and ETF expertise,” said Doug Cifu, Virtu Financial Chief Executive Officer.  “Clients of MarketAxess will have access to Virtu’s leading ETF platform RFQ-hub and will benefit from the seamless integration of RFQ-hub’s ETF trading and analytics services.   In addition, RFQ-hub will have access to MarketAxess’ leading fixed income platform.”

The arrangement is subject to the parties entering into a binding definitive agreement.