BondDesk to Offer Auction Rate Securities (ARS) to Retail Marketplace
Published June 7th, 2007
Continuing to demonstrate its leadership in fixed income electronic trading, BondDesk Group announced today that it will begin trading Auction Rate Securities (ARS) through its Alternative Trading System (ATS). E*TRADE Securities LLC will be the first financial services firm to offer electronically traded ARS to retail investors via the BondDesk marketplace.
BondDesk has transformed the trading of the ARS asset class by eliminating multiple steps and the manual processing involved with shopping, selecting and executing orders. Now E*TRADE customers can easily access Auction Rate Securities through E*TRADE Financial Advisors. According to Thomson Financial, Auction Rate Securities is a $260 billion market and includes Auction Rate Preferred Securities (ARPS) and Municipal Auction Rate Securities (MARS). Auction Rate Securities have become increasingly popular with investors because they are short term instruments designed to preserve capital, while generally realizing higher rates of return than traditional money market investments.
With BondDesk’s straight-through processing, ARS market participants can buy and sell at auction or in the secondary markets. Auction orders are processed quickly and efficiently; thereby eliminating a complex manual process as well as the need for exchanging data materials to execute orders.
Rob Slaymaker, Chief Executive Officer of BondDesk Group, remarked, “We are delighted to make it possible for E*TRADE retail customers to trade Auction Rate Securities through an E*TRADE Financial Advisor. We look forward to working with E*TRADE Securities in offering the sale of these popular investment vehicles to retail investors. The ARS market continues to experience tremendous growth and our electronic trading platform will further fulfill accelerated supply and demand for this currently under-serviced asset class.”
BondDesk will offer the following ARS asset classes: Taxable Preferred, Taxable Debt, Tax-exempt Preferred, Tax-Exempt Debt and Dividend Received Deductions (DRD) Preferred. And through the BondDesk Alternative Trading System (ATS), E*TRADE customers can view daily ARS auctions and offerings, historical reset rates, future reset dates, multi-sourced descriptive data from leading auction agents (e.g., Deutsche Bank, BONY), ARS dealers and third-party trading systems.
About BondDesk Group
BondDesk Group is a leading odd-lot fixed-income electronic trading platform and provider of software solutions to the securities industry. The BondDesk Alternative Trading System (ATS), run by BondDesk’s broker-dealer subsidiary, BondDesk Trading LLC, connects broker-dealers through a centralized marketplace by offering a diverse pool of liquidity. With over 30,000 live taxable and tax-exempt offerings from over 90 leading dealers, BondDesk executes over 20,000 trades daily. BondDesk has over 125 employees, with key offices in California, Michigan, and New York. In August 2006, Advent International, a leading global private equity firm, acquired a majority interest in BondDesk Group. For more information, please visit http://www.bonddeskgroup.com/ BondDesk Group
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