Citi is acquiring an undisclosed minority equity stake in electronic fixed income platform TradeWeb.
The US bank will take a seat on the Tradeweb board, joining the nine other Wall Street dealers that paid $180 million for a minority stake in the platform last year. The nine dealers had initially sold TradeWeb to Thomson Financial in April 2004.
In a statement Citi says it is already an active participant in 12 of TradeWeb's online marketplaces and as part of this agreement, it will become a liquidity provider in a number of new Tradeweb markets, including interest rate swaps.
Commenting on the investment, Paco Ybarra, head of fixed income currencies and commodities products, Citi, says: "As a liquidity provider, we have participated in the growing success of its online marketplaces. We are pleased to become even more involved with Tradeweb as an investor."
"Citi's investment furthers strengthens the commitment of the sell-side to Tradeweb," adds Vic Simone, head of principal strategic investments for Goldman Sachs and chairman of Tradeweb. "All 10 dealers are resolved to drive the growth of electronic trading through Tradeweb."
Many of the dealers backing Tradeweb - including Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, The Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS - were also involved in rival platform LiquidityHub, the central fixed income pricing aggregator for swaps trading which was shut down last month.