Citi and Bank of America, joined by Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and Moody’s Analytics, announced the launch of Octaura Holdings (“Octaura”), an independent company whose goal is to create the first open market electronic trading platform for syndicated loans and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs).
Built in collaboration with Genesis Global, the low-code software development platform for financial markets, Octaura aims to provide comprehensive trading solutions with natively integrated data and analytics.
The Octaura venue for loans will launch first, with the CLO trading venue to follow. The company then plans to expand to other products in the credit market.
“Octaura’s aim is to blend definitive action in financial markets and a bold vision for the future of global credit trading,” said Brian Bejile Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of Octaura. “The secondary markets for trading syndicated loans and CLOs have not significantly evolved since syndicated loans first started trading over thirty years ago. When we launched CLO eBidding on Citi Velocity, we saw a 50 percent jump in bid volume in the first week. With that, the idea for Octaura was born.”
The launch of Octaura’s cutting-edge technology arrives at a time of unprecedented growth in the CLO and syndicated loan markets, which have doubled in size over the last decade to more than $1 trillion and $1.4 trillion in outstanding notionals, respectively. Octaura will provide electronic trading protocols for price negotiations, Straight Through Processing (STP) for trade booking, and data and analytics functionality supplied by Moody’s Analytics for the first time in one cohesive solution. Deepening the well of liquidity will reduce barriers to entry for a substantive portion of the investor base and benefit both the primary and secondary markets going forward.
Brian Carosielli, Co-Head of Global Credit Trading at Bank of America, said, “With the launch of Octaura, we are proud to be moving our industry in a direction that will bring greater liquidity, efficiency and ultimately attract a broader investor base to the syndicated loan and structured credit markets.”
Mickey Bhatia, Head of Global Spread Products at Citi, said, “Octaura will be of profound impact to all subsectors of the syndicated loan and structured credit markets, as the tenets of automation, digitalization, and centralization stand to enhance every aspect of the trading process.”
Daniel Ezra, Global Head of CLO Trading at Credit Suisse, said, “We believe that Octaura and the electronification of these asset classes will help reduce operational risks by eliminating manual components, ultimately making the overall market more efficient.”
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Octaura is an industry-led electronic trading, data and analytics solution initially for syndicated loans and CLOs. Founded as an independent company in 2022, Octaura represents a significant milestone in the advancement of modernizing the syndicated loan and structured credit markets through common operational criteria, automation across pre and post-trade life cycles, improved ease in transactions and advanced data and analytics. To learn more, visit octaura.com
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
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