The growth of liquidity in the dealer to client corporate bond market has benefited electronic platforms; today these account for 24% of all transactions. Celent anticipates that by 2007, 40% of trades will be conducted electronically accounting for 28% of the volume.

In a new report, " ," Celent examines the European dealer-to-client corporate bond market, and analyzes how this market is turning to electronic trading. The report provides detailed information on market structure, expected growth, and challenges ahead.

According to Axel Pierron, Celent Analyst and author of the report "Electronic trading in the European dealer-to-client corporate bond market has clearly gained momentum during the past two years. The narrowing of the spread has encouraged investors to use electronic platforms, and they have experienced the added value provided by electronic processes such as better management of post-execution information or decrease of error rate."

While single-dealer sites still attract a majority of electronic trades, multi-dealer systems are gaining ground. Currently, close to 50% of electronic transactions are conducted via single-dealer sites.

Pierron adds, "the implication/commitment of institutional investors to electronic trading and the development of new functionalities on multi-dealer platforms could clearly change the situation. The strong volume growth of MarketAxess Europe, the only platform really dedicated to credit debt instruments, shows that investors recognize the value provided by multi-dealer platform in the D2C corporate bond market".

The report closely examines MarketAxess, Bondvision, Bloomberg, and the exchanges offering services in the dealer-to-client corporate bonds arena.

The 34-pages report contains 17 figures and 3 tables.

of Celent's Retail Securities & Investments research service can download the report electronically by clicking on the icon to the left. Non-members should contact info@celent.com for more information.