The Cassiopeia Committee was established in early 2010 to implement recommendations for the introduction of corporate bond platforms in Europe. MTS’s proposal is in response to specifications put forward by the committee on 26 April 2010.

MTS’s proposed market would be open for the listing and trading of Euro-denominated debt instruments and would operate on an electronic order-driven model. It would be managed by the EuroMTS Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF), and use MTS’s high capacity, low latency, Cash Market Facility (CMF) technology. CMF technology also already offers Straight-Through-Processing (STP) to Europe’s major clearing houses and central securities depositories.

Jack Jeffery, Chief Executive at MTS, said:

“MTS has been operating the continent’s largest and most liquid pan-European electronic fixed income market for over 20 years. With this experience, and our extensive existing international client base, we are very well placed to provide a corporate bond platform serving Europe’s financial community.

“We have an ongoing dialogue with our customers, and will be working closely with them to assess our proposed platform. This will ensure the platform is built on a suitable model, capable of attracting good levels of liquidity.”

MTS currently operates Europe’s largest electronic market for the trading of government debt securities, issued by 14 separate countries. It has over 500 unique counterparties and sees an average daily turnover of €85 billion.