Tradeweb Markets Inc (NASDAQ:TW) today announced the completion of its first Southbound Bond Connect transactions via the trading link between Tradeweb and China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS).
“Southbound Bond Connect is the latest evolutionary step for China’s financial market, providing domestic investors with more flexibility and choice when trading offshore bonds,” said Lee Olesky, CEO of Tradeweb Markets. “Together with CFETS, our goal is to better meet onshore investors’ demand for streamlined access to global investment. We will continue to focus on further enhancing the trading link by deploying new innovative trading functionality, just as we did with the Northbound leg of Bond Connect.”
Southbound Bond Connect facilitates fixed income portfolio diversification for institutional investors in China. Tradeweb collaborates closely with CFETS to create a uniform trading experience for both offshore and onshore institutions via the electronic request-for-quote (RFQ) workflow.
Under Southbound Bond Connect, Tradeweb supports transactions of various bonds tradable in the Hong Kong bond market denominated in CNH, HKD, EUR, GBP and USD.
James Sun, Head of Asia at Tradeweb, said:
“We were the first platform to facilitate Northbound trading on Bond Connect more than four years ago, and we are here again on Day One of Southbound trading. Today’s launch offers onshore investors enhanced access to overseas liquidity, pre-trade transparency and innovative trading mechanisms on Southbound Bond Connect.”
In 2017, Tradeweb was selected as the first trading link to the Northbound leg of Bond Connect, having played a positive role in the initiative’s design, creation and development. More than 2,730 offshore investors across 34 jurisdictions have accessed the China Interbank Bond Market (CIBM) via the Northbound channel, which alongside CIBM Direct serves as one of the main entry points to China’s debt markets for foreign investment.