Interest rate swaps exchange trueEX has brought an anti-competition action against Markitserv, accusing the IHS Markit business of cutting it out of the market.
According to trueEX, Markitserv, an over-the-counter post-trade platform, recently terminated their long-running trading relationship due to trueEX’s unwillingness to allow Markit to manage its post-trade processes.
The decision means that Markiserv is no longer able to accept ‘drop copy’-only messages from trueEX. The legal complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on 8 May. It seeks an injunction delaying the termination of their agreement.
It has been alleged that Markitserv’s decision to cut ties with trueEX comes in response to trueEX’s launch of its own post-trade service provider truePTS in December 2015, which is eating into Markitserv’s market share.
In a statement on the decision to file the legal action, trueEX co-founder and CEO, Sunil Hirani, said: “What I have surmised from my conversations with Markit, is they would like us to interact with them in a manner that most closely resembles the way voice broker IDB firms interact with them for voice trades—meaning the transaction would be executed on trueEX (FIX or UI) and then Markit exclusively would perform the matching, clearing and SDR messaging lifecycle events.”
“This change requires trueEX to insert Markit in the middle of all of our activities in order to process, clear and report transactions, thereby creating additional workflow steps, potentially slower response times, additional software and connectivity changes and higher costs.”
Hirani encouraged mutual clients of the two platforms to lend their voices to trueEX’s calls for the trading relationship to be reinstated.
IHS Markit has yet to respond to a request for comment.
