Agency brokers offer new hope for bond market liquidity

Secondary bond markets are hopelessly illiquid. Dealers refuse to make markets to investors. But a new breed of agency broker now offers the chance to match buyers and sellers.

INVESTMENT BANKS ARE riven by fear – the reason why managers have removed virtually all risk from their bond trading desks. Not that they have much capital to support risk-taking anyway. But amid the gloom and dislocation, there are at last signs of organic repair in the debt markets.

This is not a government-sponsored initiative to fix some broken aspect of the financial market. Agency brokers are returning to the debt markets, a development heralded as a return to the primacy of relationships.

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