• MTS and Marco Polo collaborate to benefit fixed income market participants in frontier and emerging markets
• Referral agreement designed to extend MTS US corporate bond electronic trading capabilities more broadly to non-US investors
• Highlights growing global interest in all-to-all electronic bond trading model

MTS Markets International (MMI), part of London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), and Marco Polo Securities have recently entered into a marketing agreement in relation to its US trading platform, MTS BondsPro.* As part of the agreement, Marco Polo will introduce the MTS BondsPro corporate bond electronic trading platform to its extensive list of institutional clients in frontier and emerging markets covering nearly 20 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Eligible investors in these markets will benefit from the ability to trade with the vast network of institutional counterparties on the MTS BondsPro network, a community of more than 400 broker dealers and buy-side clients on an anonymous all-to-all order book. The platform offers a 22-hour trading day allowing trading in different time zones across the US, Europe and Asia, providing traders access to over 20,000 corporate bonds with live prices daily. MTS BondsPro continues to see record and growing interest, with 43% growth in trading volume for 2019 to date following 65% growth in 2018.

David Parker, Head of MTS Markets International:

“We are delighted to offer our high quality corporate bond market to a broader set of frontier and emerging market investors via Marco Polo. This is an important step to support diversity of interest in the US corporate bond market, a sign of growing global electronic volumes and a reflection of the increasing appeal of the all-to-all trading model for fixed income securities. We look forward to improving our access and service to our existing clients globally.”

Vinode Ramgopal, Chairman of Marco Polo:

“The MTS BondsPro platform allows more than 50 securities firms on our platform to secure direct access to the liquidity of US debt markets. We share with MTS and London Stock Exchange Group a vision to accelerate the growth of local capital markets and this agreement is another step in our mission to lower barriers to cross-border trading and add to a deeper global liquidity pool.”

Source: LSEG