Author: Antony Currie
So you’re still not convinced that multi-bank e-commerce platforms are a nightmare to manage? Perhaps an email exchange between some of BondVision’s owners will help to change your mind.
BondVision is the dealer-client division of MTS, the relatively successful electronic inter-dealer European government bond platform. Earlier this year it took over BondClick, a rival dealer-client platform set up by six banks last year, in what was more a mercy killing than a merger.
BondClick failed because of disputes over strategy between the member banks, its CEO and the staff. Now it seems that some of that appetite for a squabble is rubbing off on BondVision.
On August 15, Deutsche Bank legal counsel Victoria Vohmann sent an exhaustive email to nearly 60 people at over 20 institutions stating the reasons why Deutsche would not be signing the final pre-launch BondVision documents.
At first sight the requests weren’t that unreasonable – seeking greater clarity, mainly – but it came as a shock to some on the receiving end, not least MTS itself. Two days later the firm’s deputy CEO, Mario Spongano, sent a reply to Vohmann and all her cc-ed addressees stating that Deutsche had already “approved a draft of the regulations of the Bondvision Market twice in the past…” – once as a board member, and once as a shareholder. What’s more, he wrote: “On June 22nd 2001 Deutsche Bank was invited to (but did not attend) a BondVision general meeting, where a final hard copy of the BV regulations was distributed to all participants…” It has since been available on line, he said.
And, he wondered, had the Deutsche people missed the point, let alone the deadline? “…these regulations are not negotiable because of the nature itself of a regulated market, and any proposed change needs to be agreed by the majority of BV Dealers first, then submitted to the MTS Spa board, the MTS Spa Shareholders Assembly, the Italian Treasury, who can accept only after positive opinion of the Bank of Italy and of Consob (Italian supervisory authority)…”
Not all were happy with this broadly distributed discussion, however. Edward Ballsdon, European head of government bonds at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, sent off a terse email to Vohmann telling her not to send any more emails to anyone at his bank. “Whilst you might believe your comments are useful to us, they are not…”, he wrote.
But the final word, thus far, came from Gianluca Garbi, CEO of MTS, who added his thoughts on August 21. “I think that the mail sent by Dresdner represent [sic] the view of the majority of people.”
But then came the coup de grace from Garbi, picking up on the regulatory constraints his deputy had mentioned a few days earlier: “In any case, in the light of the fact that you forgot to copy the regulators that approved these documents, I will do it on your behalf…”
He then faxed the entire transcript to the Banca D’Italia, the Ministero del Tesoro and Consob.
