Global Bank Consortium, a group of global financial institutions, announced on Friday it has created a new capital markets syndication platform, DirectBooks. The organization reported that the financial institutions partnering to develop the platform are Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.
“DirectBooks will simplify the primary issuance process through the use of structured data and streamlined communications. The new service will increase the efficiency and accuracy of deal workflow information among market participants by disseminating it through a robust communication platform that can be integrated into underwriter and investor systems to better connect underwriters and their clients. DirectBooks expects to scale globally for primary market offerings.”
While sharing more details about the platform, Andrew Karp, Head of Global Investment Grade Capital Markets at Bank of America (BofA Securities), stated:
“As an industry-led platform, DirectBooks will offer a centralized hub for communication around primary market transactions and greatly improve the efficiency of the new issue process.”
Anne Daley, Investment Grade Syndicate at Barclays, also commented:
“DirectBooks will help drive increased collaboration on a global scale, and has the ability to deliver efficiencies and benefits to all participants in the primary issuance market. While DirectBooks will initially focus on Investment Grade transactions, its functionality should make it a platform of choice for other asset classes in the future.”
Kamya Somasundaram, Head of Americas Credit Capital Markets at BlackRock, went on to add:
“The creation of DirectBooks is an opportunity to re-engineer the way primary markets function by leveraging technology to improve connectivity, efficiency and accuracy. We are lending our expertise as an investor in the primary market as well as a leading provider of order management systems, investment technology and risk analytics, via the Aladdin platform, to enhance the function of the markets for all investors.”