ETS Connect launches UK sterling bond consolidated tape

ETS Connect launched a consolidated tape for the UK sterling bond market, providing a single, continuous feed of trade and price information for primary gilts and a broad range of sterling corporate bonds.

The service aggregates trade reports and publicly available prices from multiple trading venues and reporting sources, converts the inputs to a common format and publishes the output in real time through one distribution channel. Market participants can access the tape via low-latency feeds and application programming interfaces.

Input records include price, size, timestamp and the venue or reporting origin. Subscribers may choose real-time streams or delayed reference data, subject to licensing terms. The tape draws on reports from venues and counterparties that submit bond transactions and tradeable prices.

The service includes tools to normalise differing reporting formats and to flag late or corrected trade reports. Historical datasets built from the consolidated feed are available to support compliance checks, best execution monitoring and research. The company intends to expand coverage and refine data rules as more parties connect and as reporting practices change.

UK policymakers and market participants have flagged fragmentation in bond trading and post-trade reporting as an obstacle to transparent price formation. ETS Connect describes the tape as a central source of post-trade information intended to reduce the time required to assemble a composite view of executed prices across venues and dealer platforms.

Industry users described the tape as a resource for market surveillance and for constructing benchmarks, while noting that many fixed-income trades remain bilateral and executed off-venue. ETS Connect acknowledged not all trades will appear on the tape immediately and that coverage depends on the completeness of reporting from counterparties and regulated venues.

A consolidated tape collects and publishes trade and price information from multiple trading venues into one feed. Such tapes are common in equities markets; for bonds, their usefulness depends on wide participation by trading venues, dealers and reporting counterparties and on consistent reporting standards.