In 1999, Cantor Fitzgerald's eSpeed owned the Treasury market. Today they have less than 10% of a business they once dominated. A thread on how competition, government action & 9/11 changed eSpeed's trajectory & the balance of power in the government bond market:
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BrokerTec's rise was not without scandal. As market share quickly flipped their way, the Feds began investigating anti-competitive practices among the owning banks. They argued the banks were boycotting eSpeed, not trading efficiently but to build up their own platform.pic.twitter.com/7CVrMtk79i
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In 2003, the DOJ pressured BrokerTec's owners to sell to ICAP. BrokerTec stayed w/ ICAP until 2018, when
$CME bought it as part of a $5.5 billion deal for NEX Group. Meanwhile, eSpeed kept lagging, and was ultimately sold to Nasdaq in 2013, where it still sits today.pic.twitter.com/N4Gv71dIgq
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eSpeed currently owns ~15% of the inter-dealer Treasury market; BrokerTec owns more than 70%:pic.twitter.com/JJ8OmaqMYL
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Takeaways: A consortium of banks is behind almost every change in exchange power. If banks aren't behind it, it probably won't succeed. Sometimes it takes a perfect storm of competition, technology and even tragedy for an incumbent exchange to lose its hold on a market.
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Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/17/business/bond-broker-inquiry.html … https://www.ft.com/content/05c4376e-7955-11d9-89c5-00000e2511c8 … https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2001/09/20/carrying-on … https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr381.pdf …
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