Bloomberg and DirectBooks have announced a collaboration on automated primary bond market workflows is now live.
The collaboration brings together DirectBooks and TSOX, Bloomberg’s fixed income focused execution management offering within the Bloomberg execution management systems (EMS), and supports a workflow for the primary market, delivering electronic workflows and straight-through processing (STP) to institutional investors.
Clients using existing standard connectivity should be able to stage order messages to TSOX to be routed directly into the syndicate orderbook via DirectBooks. Allocation messages are then returned electronically from DirectBooks directly to TSOX and booked straight into the OMS resulting in an integrated, auditable client workflow that is designed to reduce operational risk and help real-time position management.
This mirrors a similar collaboration between Bloomberg and S&P Global’s Investor Access in 2023.
The collaboration should improve what can be a highly manual process, resulting in reduction of operational and compliance risks.
Additionally, clients of Bloomberg AIM, its order and investment management system, will have built-in integration to the workflow as newly announced bond details are automatically accessible via AIM as soon as it becomes available on the Bloomberg Terminal. This should then enable portfolio analysis, compliance, and order routing with no additional setup required by the client.
“Increasing efficiency and enhancing transparency are key parts of our value proposition at Bloomberg, and digitising the primary markets advances both,” said Ravi Sawhney, head of product, buy-side execution at Bloomberg. “This integration with DirectBooks delivers a simplified, electronic workflow that elevates the client’s primary market experience. Our ongoing investment in this space enables traders to bring together powerful data insights with fast execution management in TSOX, all within a centralized new-issue workflow.”
“DirectBooks is excited to provide expanded investor access through Bloomberg’s world-class EMS and OMS,” said Rich Kerschner, chief executive officer of DirectBooks. “We are committed to enhancing efficiency across primary markets by providing multiple channels of access. The integration with Bloomberg was driven by client demand and their global distribution. This is a logical next step in our evolution.”
Since the DirectBooks platform went live in late 2020, it reports that its underwriter community has grown to 48 firms covering fixed income primary issuance across investment grade, emerging markets, sovereigns, supranationals and agencies (SSA), and high yield. It also reports the institutional investor community now reaches over 1,000 accounts ranging from the largest asset managers, pensions funds, and insurance companies to family offices, wealth management, and sovereign entities.
TSOX is part of Bloomberg’s EMS offering, which also includes EMSX for equities and exchange traded derivatives and FXEM which enables FX execution. These support end-to-end workflows and help clients to manage positions, portfolio and trading risk, and access analytical tools from pre-trade through to post-trade TCA. TSOX integrates news, indications, real time market data, pricing and trade analytics into a workspace.
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