BondDesk.com, an online trading platform specializing in the regional market, announced this week that it had acquired TIPS Inc., a provider of fixed-income calculations software for the financial services industry.
The company, founded by Jan Mayle in 1986, will become a division of BondDesk and will rename its suite of products BondDesk*Analytics. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"It's a great calculator," said Jay Caldas, vice president of Hartfield, Titus & Donnelly. "We were looking at buying it ourselves, but decided to develop our own."
The acquisition continues BondDesk's consolidation of technology tools. Last October, the retail platform acquired BondNexus, which provided software that allows bankers, traders, dealers, and issuers on BondDesk's system to see information about bond sales as they take place.
"This acquisition further solidifies BondDesk's position in the e-bond trading marketplace by extending our realm of service to our clients," said Joseph Nirta, chief information officer of BondDesk, noting that Mayle "literally wrote the book on fixed-income analytics."
Mayle is the author of the Standard Securities Calculations Methods books published by the Securities Industry Association.
The software library provides calculation routines for valuation and analysis of domestic, foreign, developed, and emerging market fixed-income securities to developers of in-house and commercial systems, according to the TIPS Web site.
Before forming TIPS, Mayle had been a consultant to financial firms for several years.
BondDesk president Brad Wendt said BondDesk had been working with Mayle on analytics and decided to acquire TIPS about four months ago -- but didn't formally announce the acquisition until Tuesday because Mayle first wanted to talk with his customers about it.
Wendt said that TIPS had created the standards sanctioned by the SIA and The Bond Market Association. If someone wants to calculate a yield on a security, Mayle's book shows how to do these calculations, and the software program provides online calculators to do them.
"The long and short of it is you have to have consistency in calculations across fixed-income products," Wendt said. "That's what Jan's company does."
Mayle's company provides speed as well as accuracy, according to Wendt. "When you're doing as many calculations as BondDesk is doing every day, speed is a huge issue," he said. "TIPS leads the field in terms of calculation."
Mayle said that he believes joining BondDesk will make it easier for TIPS to explore new avenues in product development.
"Working with BondDesk allows us to see firsthand how end users implement their products," Mayle said in a BondDesk statement. This will help TIPS -- now BondDesk*Analytics -- design more customized and functional software, Mayle added.
Lisa Edwards, president of BondDesk rival ValuBond, did not comment, other than to note that BondDesk "had another tool for its toolbox."
BondDesk is a privately held company whose equity partners include ABN AMRO Financial Service Inc.; A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc.; Bank of America; Bear, Stearns & Co.; RBC Dain Rauscher Inc.; Goldman, Sachs & Co.; Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc.; Prudential Securities Inc.; the Pershing Division of DLJ Securities Corp.; Raymond James & Co.; Spear Leeds & Kellogg; Susquehanna Partners; TD Waterhouse Group Inc.; UBS PaineWebber Inc.; and Wachovia Securities.
