ICE hires another from BVAL for its pricing and analytics team

In another move to bolster its products and data services, Intercontinental Exchange Inc. has hired Varun Pawar, formerly Global Head of Bloomberg LP’s BVAL.

Pawar is joining the Pricing and Analytics team at ICE Data Services and will report to Mark Heckert, Chief Product Officer at ICE Data Services.

“As a leading provider of fixed income evaluations and analytics, ICE Data Services has a strong pipeline of new and soon-to-be released products that demonstrate the company’s commitment to innovation and thought leadership in the market data space,” Pawar said. “I look forward to joining the team at ICE and being part of their mission of bringing greater efficiency and transparency to fixed income markets.”

This move comes on the heels of ICE hiring Pierce Lord, also formerly of BVAL, who is focusing on developing ICE's analytics offering, as it ramps up its efforts in evaluating fixed income markets. Lord is director of fixed income analytics at ICE, which is also the owner of the New York Stock Exchange.

Pawar was a 12-year veteran at BVAL and was Lord’s boss there. They both will be working on creating new products and upgrading existing products and services.

“Varun’s expertise across fixed income markets will be extremely valuable to us as we continue to launch new products and services that help our global customers manage risk in increasingly volatile markets,” said Lynn Martin, President of ICE Data Services.

In June, ICE Data Services launched the ICE US Broad Municipal Index, which expanded its coverage of investment-grade municipal securities.

The ICE US Broad Municipal Index (ticker: MUNI) tracks the performance of more than 58,000 investment-grade tax-exempt municipal bonds representing more than $1.6 trillion in total market capitalization.

ICE agreed to buy TMC Bonds for $685 million in cash earlier this year, in another string of mergers and acquisitions in the municipal fixed income data and fintech space.

Upon closing, TMC Bonds will integrate its electronic fixed income market with ICE’s fixed income trading and data business, offering clients access to improved workflow capabilities.

Tradeweb Markets Inc. and Intercontinental Exchange Inc. also introduced Tradeweb ICE U.S. Treasury Closing Prices. Tradeweb ICE U.S. Treasury Closing Prices is designed to represent the daily market mid-price for Treasury securities, the firms announced this week. Tradeweb and ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA) are also planning to launch other pricing data

Tradeweb is operates electronic marketplaces for rates, credit, equities and money markets and ICE is operates exchanges and clearing houses and is a provider of data and listings services

Late last month, in response to the approval of Rule 6c-11 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, ICE announced it would be expanding its presence in the ETF arena.

ICE said the new rule will update the regulation of ETFs and bring new standards to the industry. Next month, ICE plans to launch a new service called ETF Hub, which is designed to bring greater efficiency to the ETF primary market.

ICE also in August acquired several fixed income volatility indices from Bank of America, including the Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate (MOVE) index.