Markit completes acquisition of SwapsWire

Markit today announced that it has completed the acquisition of SwapsWire, the electronic trade confirmation network for the OTC derivative markets. Markit expects to complete the full integration of the company by July this year. The news follows Markit’s announcement in December that it had agreed in principle to buy SwapsWire

SwapsWire was previously owned by a consortium of 21 dealers. The addition of SwapsWire’s workforce brings Markit’s global headcount to over 650 employees. Chip Carver, SwapsWire’s chief executive, will join Markit’s executive team as co-head of Markit Trade Processing (MTP), based in New York. Jeff Gooch, co-head of MTP, is based in London.

The integrated MTP services have been re-branded as follows with immediate effect:
• Markit Trade Manager (previously MTP) provides cross-asset class trade workflow and reporting services for buy-side clients, including links to Markit Wire and DTCC Deriv/SERV
• Markit Tie Out, which forms part of Markit Trade Manager, allows buy-side and sell-side firms to affirm the economics of trades on trade date
• Markit Wire (previously SwapsWire) is a trade date legal confirmation service with real time messaging and trade resolution
• Markit PBWire is a trade acceptance service for prime brokers and their counterparts
• Markit PortRec is a portfolio reconciliation service.

According to data from the latest Markit Metrics report, trade confirmation backlogs in credit derivatives stabilised in the first quarter this year to approximately 6,000 trades per dealer per month relative to average monthly trading volumes of 25,000 trades per dealer.