Trading Technologies Moves Into Fixed Income With Acquisition Of AxeTrading

The acquisition marks a significant broadening of TT’s multi-asset capabilities with an expansion into full coverage of corporate, government, municipal and emerging market bonds as well as over-the-counter (OTC) interest rate swaps

March 08, 2023 - Trading Technologies International, Inc. (commonly known as “TT”), a global capital markets technology platform provider, infrastructure and data solutions, announced it has acquired London-based AxeTrading, a leading global provider of fixed income trading solutions. 

The acquisition marks a significant broadening of TT’s multi-asset capabilities with an expansion into full coverage of corporate, government, municipal and emerging market bonds as well as over-the-counter (OTC) interest rate swaps, strengthening TT’s leading position in fixed income derivatives and U.S. Treasuries. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

For more than a decade, AxeTrading has serviced a wide range of global customers with its award-winning platform. In addition to providing connectivity to all major fixed income trading venues, AxeTrading also offers a highly sophisticated, customisable pricing and quote management engine, and automated workflow management tools, delivering substantial benefits to market participants faced with the complexity of pricing, quoting and trading fixed income products across multiple venues and protocols. 

Keith Todd, CEO of TT, said, “The fixed income market represents a major opportunity for TT given its size, considerable growth and ongoing adoption of electronic trading. This acquisition is a key element of our strategy to expand beyond listed derivatives and cryptocurrencies, giving us an extensive offering in the fixed income space. AxeTrading and Trading Technologies are both recognized as technology leaders in our respective markets. We are excited to welcome the talented AxeTrading team to TT and to implement our shared vision for the delivery of core fixed income functionality via the industry’s leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.”

AxeTrading CEO Greville Lucking said, “This acquisition represents a significant game changer. The combination of AxeTrading’s leading expertise in fixed income markets technology, together with TT’s already established position in listed derivatives and U.S. Treasuries, will provide a comprehensive offering to customers globally. Leveraging the TT SaaS platform to deliver and distribute a true multi-asset offering is exactly what our customers are seeking. We have been extremely impressed with the ambition of the TT team in the fixed income market space, and we are confident that our aligned vision and culture will drive a highly successful future for our customers, partners and employees.”

During 2022, TT acquired RCM-X, a technology provider of algorithmic execution strategies and quantitative trading products, and entered into strategic partnerships with KRM22 plc to expand its risk management product portfolio, Talos to broaden its cryptocurrency offering, ATEO Finance to deliver post-trade allocation services and Bantix Technologies to provide the QuikStrike options analysis software application through the TT platform. TT will further expand its product portfolio and asset class coverage through new strategic initiatives in 2023.

Trading Technologies is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology platform provider to the global capital markets industry. The company’s award-winning TT® platform connects to the world’s major international exchanges and liquidity venues in listed derivatives alongside a growing number of asset classes, including fixed income and cryptocurrencies. 

The TT platform delivers advanced tools for trade execution and order management, market data solutions, analytics, trade surveillance, risk management and infrastructure services to the world’s leading sell-side institutions, buy-side firms and exchanges. 

The company’s blue-chip client base includes the Tier 1 banks as well as brokers, money managers, hedge funds, proprietary traders, Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs), commercial hedgers and risk managers. These firms rely on the TT ecosystem to manage their end-to-end trading operations. In addition, exchanges utilize TT’s technology to deliver innovative solutions to their market participants. TT also strategically partners with technology companies to make their complementary offerings available to Trading Technologies’ global client base through the TT ecosystem.

Founded in 2009, AxeTrading is headquartered in London with sales offices in Sydney and Singapore. The multi-award winning global fixed income trading software company enables unique market making, quoting, bond pricing, order execution and market intelligence across the full range of fixed income market participants. 

The AxeTrader Quoting and Execution Management System (QEMS) workflow gives access to the industry’s most flexible, personalized and user-configurable fixed income quoting and pricing engine. The firm frees traders to make the best use of their existing systems to interact seamlessly across execution venues and connect to leading market data sources.