Sources, including several dealers, have confirmed that Bloomberg’s Message service, used by broker dealers for sending runs to clients, “sprayed dealer runs across the street” as one source put it.
Runs are the lists of bonds and derivatives dealers will trade at certain prices. These were reportedly sent out to non-clients, including other broker dealers. Runs are typically sent direct to specific clients in order to drive trading activity, because pricing for bonds and derivatives is tied to the value of trading activity with a given client, and is valuable proprietary information.
A Bloomberg spokesperson said, “After the US market closed on 4 December [2023] we deployed a code change that misdirected some runs for a small set of our users that were sent by Bloomberg Message during a short period of time after market hours. That change was promptly rolled back on the same day and the affected customers are being notified. We continue to investigate the issue and will update customers as more information becomes available.”
The potential impact to sell side firms is still being assessed.
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