BrokerTec – London and New York – BrokerTec, ICAP’s global electronic fixed income trading platform, and MTS, a leading fixed income electronic trading venue in Europe that is majority-owned by the London Stock Exchange Group, announce today that they are further expanding the RepoFunds Rate (RFR) indices by adding a Spanish Repo index. RepoFunds Rate, launched in 2012, is a series of daily European indices covering the German, French, Italian and Pan-European Repo markets.
Each RepoFunds Rate index accurately reflects the effective cost of Repo funding for trades executed on the BrokerTec and MTS electronic trading platforms which typically have traded volumes of €230 billion per day (single counted) between the two groups. ICAP Information Services (IIS), the information division of ICAP, calculates and publishes the indices.
Oliver Clark, Head of Product at MTS, said: “We continue to explore innovative solutions for our clients and the wider market, and the RFR Spain is the next step in the evolution of the RepoFunds Rate suite. The RFR Spain recognises the significance of the Repo market as a key indicator of the secured cost of funding in Spain.”
John Edwards, Managing Director for BrokerTec Europe Ltd, said: “Spain has a sizeable and significant Repo market and a major portion of this is transacted via the BrokerTec platform, with volumes regularly exceeding €20billion/day in nominal terms and support from both domestic and international counterparties. This launch follows the recently introduced Sterling Repo Index Rate (£RIR) in April 2016 for UK Gilt Repo and reflects the activity in the secured lending markets.”
RepoFunds Rate is based on four guiding principles: it is trade backed; has a transparent methodology; is replicable with Repo transactions; and has independent governance and trade sources.
RepoFunds Rate follows the IOSCO principles for financial benchmarks and was developed in 2012 with the Repo community to be the first index to fully reflect the effective cost of secured funding in key Eurozone countries. Index symbols are: RFR Euro; RFR Germany; RFR France; RFR Italy; and now RFR Spain. It is distributed broadly via third parties, including Reuters (REPOFUNDS) and Bloomberg (REPF) as well as being available via e-mail and FTP sources.
More information about RepoFunds Rate including historical data and calculation methodology is available at www.repofundsrate.com.