Deutsche’s Autobahn bond trading platform celebrated its fifth birthday in Europe this year. Clients get live prices on about 5,000 securities in some 20 currencies. An appealingly straightforward inventory-based system, Autobahn has won plaudits for the quality of its pricing and the breadth of securities it carries, which run across the credit spectrum. A high proportion of the bank’s bond trading volumes are executed electronically. Deutsche Bank delivers Autobahn through several channels, including Bloomberg, the internet, and its API, which went live in October 2003.
In exchange for increased flow, Deutsche is giving smaller banks access to its liquidity and technology through a white-labelling programme that gives access to its fully hosted trading platform. The white-labelling client can then give its own clients access to Deutsche’s platform under its own brand. White-label clients in the smaller regional markets can contribute prices of their own, effectively pooling liquidity. They can then execute trades using a version of Deutsche’s Tradegate. This kind of model has been a great success for banks in forex, and fixed-income white-labelling could become as common.
MB