truPTS – Their Current State and Why Their Website is Down

Since Thursday or Friday the 17th of August the website for truPTS has been down, with an unplanned error message. The short answer to the reason is officially that "trueEX is currently exploring a strategic sale of its truePTS intellectual property." and therefore by accident or design the site has been allowed to come to an end.

A contributing factor could be the relationship between truEx and banks in the market with a lawsuit against 11 of them explained very well in this article and which you can read for yourself in the PDF attached below. Last year there was also a lawsuit between truPTS and MarkitSERV regarding access to the flow of confirmation message which was resolved.  It is not evident that the truEx lawsuit had a direct causal effect on the demise of truPTS but it would seem logical to assume that getting firms to use truPTS whilst the parent firm sued 11 of the largest banks isn't going to be easy.

The opening statement of the lawsuit says "This case concerns an ongoing conspiracy among major interest rate swaps (“IRS”) dealers (“Dealer Defendants” or “Defendants”), to boycott trueEX in order to undermine increased competition in the IRS market and thereby maintain the Dealer Defendants’ massive profits. By boycotting and successfully thwarting trueEX’s IRS trading platform and similar trading platforms, Defendants have succeeded in blocking IRS customers from enjoying the benefits of greater price transparency and competition."