On Tuesday, regulated stock exchange Cboe Australia launched a series of exchange-traded corporate bond products (XTBs) that provide retail investors with access to corporate bonds from Aurizon, Bank of Queensland, Coles and Qantas.
Unlike bonds in the wholesale market, XTBs have no minimum investment, opening the asset class to all exchange-based investors. XTBs also replicate the characteristics and experience of holding the underlying bond to provide investors with a known income stream and defined maturity date.
Cboe Australia chief executive Vic Jokovic said, “We’re excited to bring our first exchange-traded bond products to Cboe Australia with XTB.
“Investors are looking for opportunities to take advantage of the relatively high yields on offer from corporate bonds at the moment, and we’re pleased to be able to expand that access to retail investors.”
Cboe said that as of 12 December 2022, XTBs offered the following yields: Aurizon, 6.24 per cent; Qantas, 6.08 per cent; Coles, 4.89 per cent; and BOQ, 4.49 per cent.
XTB head of distribution Michael Rockliff said: “With yields at the higher end of our range, the new XTBs offer a choice of mid-term or longer-term investment horizons.
“XTBs allow investors to lock in a known return before they invest — a characteristic intrinsic to fixed income investing, but otherwise difficult to achieve through other exchange-traded instruments.”
The new range of XBTs commenced trading on Cboe Australia on Tuesday, 13 December and are available through Cboe Australia market participants and supporting Australian stockbrokers.
In November, Cboe Australia appointed Rylan Uherek as the new head of software engineering from the Cboe FX New York office.
Mr Uherek was brought on to lead a growing APAC software engineering team as the exchange works to deliver the Cboe Tech migration.
