This excerpt was originally published in The DESK. Read the full article HERE.
Closing a US$7 million funding round, bond marketplace OpenYield plans to boost its client base, drive global expansion and expand its product range. The round, led by Canapi Ventures and supported by Flow Traders and Clocktower Ventures, follows earlier fundraising participation from TD Bank and Fin Capital.
OpenYield aims to provide an equity-like marketplace for bonds, in line with the broad ‘equitisation’ that has been observed across fixed income markets in recent months. The firm aggregates different types of electronic liquidity and provides them to brokerages, advisory platforms and asset managers.
“The fundamental limiting factor in the market is on the liquidity provision side,” Jonathan Birnbaum, founder and CEO of OpenYield, told The DESK. “If investors go to brokerages or advisors to buy bonds, the product experiences are pretty awful. They’re constrained by these legacy back-end marketplaces. It can take minutes for trades to execute, there can be high minimums and fees, and it can be really clunky to integrate with them as new entrants to the market.”
