Appital, the equity capital markets technology solution, and Turquoise, the pan-European MTF, majority owned by London Stock Exchange Group, “have launched Appital Turquoise BookBuilder.”
This is reportedly the first buy-side to buy-side book building platform “to give institutional investors the opportunity to proactively source liquidity.”
By bringing a historically highly manual and opaque process into an automated, electronic platform, they “gain control over the entire bookbuilding process.” Buyside firms benefit from liquidity discovery and price formation opportunities “for illiquid equity positions, as well as the ability to execute large volumes on the regulated Turquoise MTF, often in multiple days’ ADV, with minimal market impact or risk of price erosion.”
The European trading team of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, Norges Bank Investment Management, “has successfully originated and executed the first trade, through a series of bilateral transactions.”
The EMS vendors connected at the time of first trade “include Flextrade, Factset’s Portware and TS Imagine.” The deal executed successfully “using Turquoise, with Bernstein as the executing broker.” Multiple global asset managers “participated as part of a series of bilateral transactions.”
Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™ is “a significant milestone in Appital’s mission to bring innovation and efficiency to the bookbuilding process.” In the run-up to launch, Appital worked “with forward-looking industry champions to develop the necessary technological infrastructure to support essentially a new liquidity discovery mechanism and workflow, integrating with EMS providers FlexTrade, FactSet Portware and TS Imagine, and executing brokers Bernstein and Instinet.”
Through the integration with Turquoise, buyside firms “benefit from a single point of access and execution, with seamless straight-through-processing (STP) to more than 20 settlement destinations.”
Mark Badyra, CEO of Appital, noted:
“The launch of Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™ represents a step change for the asset management industry in the way they unlock and proactively drive liquidity in the market, ushering in a new era of automation in equity markets. From today, the buyside community has greater exposure to deal flow opportunities they have not been able to access before, and investors can interact with like-minded institutions in the liquidity and price formation process.”
Dr. Robert Barnes, Group Head of Securities Trading & CEO Turquoise Global Holdings at London Stock Exchange Group, commented:
“Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™ delivers the next significant efficiency for asset managers and contributors of capital. Where bookbuilding is the appropriate mechanism to find the right price for large block trades, Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™ innovates with the world’s first automation of buyside bookbuilding seamlessly integrating STP trading to settlement.”
Norges Bank Investment Management “completed the first successful trade via Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™, validating the new buyside workflow, from driving demand, to bookbuilding, allocation, deal distribution and execution.”
Since inception, Norges Bank Investment Management “has been instrumental in refining this service, from feedback on integration with broker-neutral execution and order management system FlexTrade to shaping the visual interface for a smooth user experience.”
Emil Framnes, Global Head of Trading and Transition at Norges Bank Investment Management commented:
“Unlocking latent liquidity and executing multiple days’ ADV is essential to achieving our investment objectives. We welcome Appital’s innovative peer to peer access of hard-to-find liquidity and executing large volumes using Appital Turquoise BookBuilder™ without market impact or the risk of price erosion. Appital’s intuitive interface and integration made adoption easy.”
For more details on this update, check here.