Tradeweb Markets Inc. (NASDAQ: TW), a global electronic marketplace for interest rates, credit, equity and money markets, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire r8fin, a technology provider specializing in algorithmic trading of U.S. Treasury bonds and interest rate futures.
Founded in Chicago in 2016, r8fin offers an algorithmic toolset and thin client execution management system (EMS) trading applications to facilitate futures and spot trading. These solutions complement Tradeweb’s existing Dealerweb Active Streams, Dealerweb Central Limit Order Book (CLOB), Tradeweb Request-for-Quote (RFQ) and Tradeweb AiEX (Automated Intelligent Execution) to create a valuable and broad trading approach for trading Treasury bonds and related futures.
Tradeweb expects the acquisition to be modestly accretive to its revenue growth and operating margins and accretive to earnings per share in 2024. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
Tradeweb CEO Billy Hult commented:
“r8fin’s technology will help Tradeweb reach a more advanced level of execution through a powerful combination of algorithmic techniques and cross-market integration. This is another step in executing on our vision for accessing the U.S. Treasury market, offering an integrated product suite through multiple liquidity pools across spot and futures markets. Looking further ahead, we believe that r8fin’s sophisticated technology, combined with our global network, will open new possibilities for clients engaging in relative value and macro trading across multiple asset classes.”
r8fin’s client base includes relative value hedge funds, systematic hedge funds, professional trading firms and major dealers. r8fin’s technology powers algorithmic execution of approximately $23 billion worth of U.S. Treasury securities and 350,000 futures contracts traded daily on average.
Assad Fehmy, co-founder of r8fin, commented:
“The combination with Tradeweb will further amplify r8fin’s technology to offer clients a broader range of integrated execution solutions and asset classes. It has been great to watch how our technology and network have evolved over the past seven years and I am confident that r8fin is positioned for a new phase of sustained growth as part of Tradeweb.” Fehmy will join Tradeweb upon the completion of the acquisition.
