BondLink and S&P Global Market Intelligence have launched Parity Plus, which gives muni issuers increased transparency and resources to determine market demand and conditions prior to a bond sale.
Parity Plus is an enhancement — and one of the first modernizations in over 20 years — of S&P Global Market Intelligence's Parity bidding platform, used by issuers and muni advisers for nearly 4,000 bond auctions annually, making it one of the bond market's most significant services, according to a press release.
Parity Plus is integrated into the Parity system and is fed information and data from S&P and BondLink.
Parity Plus is "no different than how people are inputting information into the [Parity] today; they just end up with a more polished final product and a dedicated deal page for each auction, which can be shared across S&P's and BondLink's networks," said Colin MacNaught, CEO and co-founder of BondLink.
Parity Plus allows muni finance teams to access a suite of advanced pre-sale tools, including transparency components, deal pages dedicated to each issuer, a virtual deal file, archives for after the auction and printing and roadshows, MacNaught said.
Parity Plus also gives "sophisticated reporting capabilities," thereby allowing government borrowers and their advisors to assess demand and improve strategies before bond auctions, the release noted.
Issuers and the municipal advisors need to have "confidence going into the day of the bid, the moment of the bid, that they have a real-time sense of market interest and bidder interest," MacNaught said.
However, bond auctions are blind, so "when you go into an auction as an issuer and you load up your deal in Parity, you have very little sense for the level of investor demand, unless you or your [municipal advisor] is doing a lot of manual work, calling a lot of buy-side firms, and that setup is really challenging for advisors," MacNaught said.
This allows municipal advisors, who play "a critical role in determining that the price for the bonds at auction is fair relative to market demand and conditions," to have access to a feature, through Parity Plus, where they can get a strong sense in real time the level of investor and market interest, he said.
"This new platform will not only streamline the pre-sale market outreach process but also facilitate more credit evaluations for potential bidders and investors, fostering the opportunity for broader deal participation," MacNaught said in a statement. "Our collaboration with S&P Global Market Intelligence demonstrates the trust vested in us to develop solutions that empower municipal market participants to excel in an increasingly crowded environment."
"We are constantly modernizing our technology for capital markets, including municipals," said Carl James, global head of fixed income and municipals in the primary markets group at S&P Global Market Intelligence, in a statement. "With the BondLink collaboration, Parity Plus will offer real-time market intelligence for more efficient capital access. We are excited about the enhanced experience for our clients in the municipals market."
