MarketAxess Holdings Inc. MKTX

MarketAxess Holdings Inc., incorporated on April 11, 2000, operates an electronic trading platform that enables fixed-income market participants to trade corporate bonds and other types of fixed-income instruments using its trading technology. Institutional investor and broker-dealer firms are the users of its trading platform, accessing global liquidity in the United States corporate bonds, emerging markets and high-yield bonds, European bonds, the United States agency bonds, municipal bonds, credit default swaps and other fixed-income securities. Through its Open Trading protocols, the Company executes trades in certain bonds between and among institutional investor and broker-dealer clients in an all-to-all trading environment on a matched principal basis. The Company also offers trading-related products and services, including market data to assist clients with trading decisions; connectivity solutions that facilitate straight-through processing; technology services to optimize trading environments, and execution services for exchange-traded fund managers and other clients. Through its Trax division, the Company also offers a range of pre- and post-trade services, including trade matching, regulatory transaction reporting, and market and reference data across a range of fixed-income and other products.

The Company's platform also provides its broker-dealer clients a solution that enables them to reach its institutional investor clients for the distribution and trading of bonds. Its disclosed multi-dealer Request For Quote (RFQ) trading functionality addresses remaining shortcomings that result from trading bonds over the telephone or via e-mail. Its services relating to trade execution include single and multiple-dealer inquiries; list trading, which is the ability to request bids and offers on multiple bonds at the same time, and swap trading, which is the ability to request an offer to purchase one bond and a bid to sell another bond, in a manner such that the two trades will be executed simultaneously, with payment based on the price differential of the bonds.

Through its Trax brand, the Company provides trade matching and regulatory transaction reporting services for European securities and market and reference data across a range of fixed-income products. Trax provides the Company with a set of technology solutions ahead of incoming pre-and post-trade transparency mandates from the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) II in Europe. Its electronic trading platform provides solutions to shortcomings of traditional bond trading methods. Its electronic trading platform provides access to the liquidity provided through the participation on its platform of active institutional investor and broker-dealer clients, including broker-dealers in global fixed-income trading. Its Open Trading protocols allow its institutional investor clients to maintain their anonymity from trade initiation through to settlement without limiting their number of potential trading counterparties. In addition, its Private Axes protocol allows participants to negotiate bilaterally on an anonymous basis.

The Company's BondTicker service provides access to real-time and historical price, yield and MarketAxess estimated spread-to-Treasuries for publicly disseminated Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE)-eligible bonds. BondTicker combines publicly-available TRACE data with the prices for trades executed on its the United States bond trading platform, integrating the data sources and providing real-time TRACE data with associated analytical tools that are not otherwise available. Through its Trax brand, the Company provides a range of information solutions for financial services firms, utilizing quotes contributed by market participants and leveraging its post-trade services for European securities. It allows subscribers to match and report trades in a range of capital market instruments, including bonds, derivatives, equities and swaps. The Company provides technology solutions and professional consulting services to fixed-income industry participants.