The Toronto Stock Exchange has purchased a 40% equity interest in CanDeal, an electronic trading system for institutional debt market professionals, for an undisclosed price.

CanDeal offers an institutional dealer-to-client electronic trading system. It consolidates real-time market prices from its participants to show the best price and yield for each instrument. Clients will be able to simultaneously request trades with multiple dealers. CanDeal is a joint venture between BMO Nesbitt Burns, Basis100 Inc., CIBC World Markets Inc., MoneyLine Telerate, National Bank Financial Inc., RBC Dominion Securities Inc., Scotia Capital Inc. and TD Securities Inc.

On July 5, CanDeal announced that it had received the necessary regulatory approvals from the Ontario Securities Commission and the Investment Dealers Association of Canada to begin operations in Ontario. The regulatory process in all other provinces is well advanced, it says.

“The TSX’s involvement in CanDeal accelerates our vision of becoming Canada’s preferred online debt securities marketplace,” said Jayson Horner, CanDeal’s president and CEO in a news release. “The TSX’s experience in operating the largest electronic trading platform in Canada will be an invaluable asset to our firm and allow us to build upon the Exchange’s superior technical capacity and specialized expertise.”

“We’ve made no secret of our ambition to work with major market participants and become part of the electronic fixed income market in Canada,” said Richard Nesbitt, president of TSX Markets. “It’s a natural extension to what we do every day, one that offers us another important venue to provide solutions to our customers while continuing to broaden our presence in the institutional field.”

CanDeal’s major competitor in the domestic fixed income market is CollectiveBid Systems Inc. of Toronto. CollectiveBid caters to both retail and institutional investors.