LiquidityHub opens with euro swaps

London-based electronic trading consortium LiquidityHub began offering euro interest rate swaps from 12 major dealers on October 22, slightly later than planned.

The system is intended to pool and distribute the fixed-income liquidity of leading dealers, 16 of which have taken equity stakes in the company. The firm’s technology aggregates real-time streaming prices from these dealers, allowing institutional clients to view and trade on live quotes from multiple sources through trading platforms Bloomberg and Reuters. The hub was originally planned to launch in the third quarter this year.

“We have had quite a successful pilot and we’re now live for euro interest rate swaps,” said the firm’s London-based chief executive Robert MacLeod. The launch follows the completion of a trial run involving a limited number of clients. MacLeod would not comment on the number of users trading on the system, or the volume of trades completed. But as the venture is only meant to cater for institutional clients, the number of users it hopes to eventually attract is below 1,000.

LiquidityHub also plans to aggregate the liquidity of its member dealers in dollar interest rate swaps and US Treasury bonds before the end of 2007. European government bonds are expected to be added during 2008.

See also: LiquidityHub expecting launch in Q3
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LiquidityHub hires chief executive