BondBook Exits Online Trading

BondBook, a venture by securities firms including Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs to trade corporate bonds over the Internet, on Monday said it will close its online trading platform after eight months of operation.

BondBook sought to provide some transparency to the corporate bond market, which is now traded mainly over the telephone through brokers. The company provided fixed-income price quotes through an anonymous trading platform, open to all market participants.

“The platform’s ambitious model required a degree of behavioral change among market participants that BondBook’s sponsors concluded was unlikely to be achieved in an acceptable time frame,” the company said.