BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bloomberg rival Thomson Reuters have all joined the Markit Collaboration Services.

The network will enable users to see availability, send instant messages, use video and chat rooms, and exchange documents across disparate messaging platforms, solving the problem of system interoperability which has previously hampered communication between market participants.

Federating messaging platforms makes it cost effective for institutions to offer the benefits of a cross-industry collaboration network to employees throughout their firm, argues the provider, which expects thousands of buyside firms, banks, exchanges, interdealer brokers and vendors to join.

The system is a challenge to Instant Bloomberg, which is widely used on Wall Street but is a closed network and mainly available only to users of the firm's $20,000 a year terminals.

The new Markit service has Thomson Reuters on board, which will federate its instant messaging tool, Eikon Messenger - which has a community of more than 200,000 financial professionals from more than 170 countries - with the network.

The network also has an open directory, enabling people to find, communicate and collaborate with one another. The messaging and directory services can be embedded in third party applications, workflows and other networks, extending the functionality of trading, processing, research and other applications.

Lance Uggla, CEO, Markit, says: "Our aim is to help financial market participants become more efficient in the way they communicate and share information. By offering them an interoperable collaboration system, we will change how financial markets operate. Having Thomson Reuters and many of the industry's major players as part of the network underlines the value of our proposition."

Zar Amrolia, co-head, fixed income and currencies, Deutsche Bank, adds: "We welcome any initiative that improves access and communication across markets and with our clients. The service will refine our back office technology footprint, whilst bringing efficiencies to our client facing franchise across the bank."