For many years, there was scepticism about whether trading in the behemoth global bond markets, with their products of varying maturities, structures and liquidity levels, could ever be electronified to a significant extent. But for Christophe Roupie, head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific for MarketAxess, one of the world’s leading electronic marketplaces for fixed income trading, meaningful change is happening and he believes it will only continue to speed up.
“Bond markets are very large and very complex,” he says. “That means that the pace of change within them can appear to be slow even when it isn’t. The evolution may seem less dramatic than in, for instance, equities or futures markets, but the volume of electronic bond trading continues to grow.”
