Zhitong Finance App learned that Tradeweb Markets Inc. (TW.US), a fintech company focusing on international fixed income transactions, reached an acquisition agreement with investment technology provider Institutional Cash Distributors (ICD) to seek growth outside of its core fixed income trading business. The electronic trading platform, known for its fixed income products, will pay around $785 million for the acquisition, which is the company's largest acquisition to date.

According to media reports earlier today, the deal will allow fintech company Tradeweb Markets to enter one of the largest institutional money market fund portals in the US. The fund portal has partnerships with around 500 enterprise-level fund management institutions.

Tradeweb Markets Inc. is an international fintech company providing electronic OTC markets, focusing on the trading business of fixed income products, ETFs, and derivatives, where fixed income accounts for the main source of revenue. The main clients it serves include some of the largest commercial banks, asset management companies, central banks, pension funds, and insurance companies.

According to information, this is the company's third business acquisition since Billy Hult (Billy Hult) took over as CEO in early 2023. Although the interest-rate fixed income business still accounts for about half of its revenue, the company has sought to accept different asset business categories to reinvent itself as a “one-stop diversified trading store.”

“The future will be diversified asset classes,” Billy Ho said in an interview with the media. “I love the idea of strengthening the one-stop service concept by continuously adding asset trading categories, products, and regions.”

Over the past five years, Tradeweb's overall revenue scale has almost doubled. Since listing on the US stock market in 2019, the company's stock price has soared by about 280% and is currently valued at around $24 billion. Holt said that the growing scale of this trend gave him confidence to find more business partners.

“My instinct is that there will be more similar acquisitions in the future,” he said in an interview. “Once you get to where we are now, you have the leverage to do more.”

It is understood that in recent months, TradeWeb has acquired technology provider R8fin and reached another deal through the acquisition of YieldBroker to expand its trading business in Australia and New Zealand. The stock rose to a record high in March.

According to reports, ICD's main business is to provide software-driven services to financial managers of major enterprises to help them manage short-term investments, with a particular focus on money market funds. Money market funds are popular because they are a highly liquid, low-risk, safe-haven way to store cash. Last year, this type of fund was very popular in the US, with an average daily balance of more than 230 billion US dollars.

In 2017, the tech company mentioned above announced a growth investment from Parthenon Capital. According to the statement, ICD's CEO Tory Hazard will join Tradeweb's operating committee once the deal is completed.

Tradeweb mainly provides fixed income trading services for asset management companies, hedge funds, and other types of institutional investors, but it also provides asset management service products for the wholesale and retail markets. Having an ICD means that the company has the ability to enter institutional business with money market funds as its core.

According to data, Refinitiv is the majority shareholder of Tradeweb. In 2021, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) acquired all of Refinitiv's businesses.