APG has become the first Dutch institutional investor to operate as an intermediated participant on BondMatch, the regulated multilateral trading facility.

Launched in 2011, BondMatch allows professional investors to trade euro-denominated corporate, financial and covered bonds through a transparent order book, which accepts only firm orders.

It includes more than 2,000 securities from more than 500 different European issuers.

Around 20% of these bonds are listed on one of Euronext’s regulated bond markets, mainly in the Netherlands and France.

There are 280 bonds issued by Dutch entities available on BondMatch.

In 2014, BondMatch continued to innovate and offer new functions to platform users, including recent developments such as its ‘request for auction’ service for large orders that concentrates liquidity at two defined points in the trading day, and, via Bloomberg, automated daily alerts that keep investors up to date in real time with trading opportunities on the BondMatch order book.

APG has chosen KBL European Private Bankers (KBL epb) to serve as its market-member intermediary for order execution.

APG’s intermediated participant status allows it to view the central order book; transfer its asset flows to KBL epb, a direct market-member of BondMatch; be represented anonymously in pre and post-trade data; and receive daily statistics on its orders and executed trades.

APG will also support BondMatch’s development and help encourage greater participation among European users of the system.

Thijs Aaten, managing director of treasury and trading at APG, said: “The current regulatory environment, where trading and finding liquidity in fixed income instruments is increasingly difficult, makes us look for innovative alternatives.

“The BondMatch platform is such an alternative because it offers a new market infrastructure that allows trading with a broad set of investors.”

Aaten added: “We attach a very high value to the concept of best execution, so, for all our trades, we want to be able to choose the platform most suitable for that trade.

“Typically, bonds are traded on an over-the-counter basis through banks. BondMatch provides us with a good alternative through an order book similar to an exchange, so it complements the range of platforms we now have for trading bonds.”