Kalahari launches fixed-income pricing system

Kalahari, which provides price discovery and analytic solutions to financial and energy trading firms, yesterday launched a real-time bond and asset swap portfolio pricing system.

The Hong Kong office of inter-dealer broker Icap was the first to sign up for the new system, and other customers are ready to follow, said the UK-based vendor.

Traders are often only able to price one bond at a time using their asset swaps screen, which provides only a snapshot, said Kalahari. The new system lets them price up to 200 bonds and asset swaps simultaneously, in real time. It also lets traders spread each bond priced against a benchmark government bond of their choice.

David Wright, Asia bond broker at Icap Hong Kong, said: "Our problem has been the time it takes to price over 200 Asian yankee/euro bond issues. If the market moves, we have to re-price. With Kalahari’s new system, each user can have up to 200 different issues pricing in real time. This means we can service our clients more efficiently.”