Tradeweb 官网转发 CEO 访谈，内容主要为公司历史、战略与行业观点

Billy Hult is Chief Executive Officer of Tradeweb Markets Inc. and a member of the board. Since joining Tradeweb in 2000, he has helped transform the company from a single-product platform for U.S. Treasuries into a leading global electronic marketplace across multiple asset classes. Mr. Hult became CEO in 2023 after serving 15 years as President — a tenure that included playing a key role in Tradeweb’s landmark IPO in 2019. As CEO, he has led Tradeweb through a period of substantial strategic expansion, broadening its product capabilities and geographic reach through the acquisitions of Yieldbroker, r8fin and ICD. An early champion of digital markets, Hult has driven Tradeweb's strategic investments and partnerships across blockchain, prediction markets, institutional crypto and digital assets, while also leading the company's AI deployment across execution, data, analytics and operations. Mr. Hult joined Tradeweb in 2000 after beginning his career at Société Générale. He holds a B.A. from Denison University. A fifth-generation New Yorker, he serves on the boards of the Tenement Museum and the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival.

SECTOR — FINANCIAL SERVICES

TWST: As I understand it, Tradeweb was founded in the late 1990s as an online trading network for U.S. Treasuries. What was the market like for this type of product then and what brought it about?

Mr. Hult : I’ve been at the company since 2000, so I’m not a founder but I’ve had my 26-year run at the company.

The original idea was that there were types of transactions that could be automated and done in a more efficient way over the internet. The concept of a salesperson standing on the trading floor and asking multiple dealers to provide liquidity to the client led someone to look at that transaction and say, “Isn’t there a better way to do this? Isn’t there a more valuable use of this person’s time than just being essentially a middleman on a standard transaction?”

The idea, very early on, was how to think about electronic RFQs — requests for quotes — to allow big asset managers, hedge funds, and insurance companies to go to multiple dealers at once and ask them for a price.

It made sense for us to start with government bonds because that was a big market and probably the most liquid market. But at the end of the day, the amazing thing is the basic business model of a client being able to look at a screen, see indicative prices in competition, and then be able to ask his or her counterparty for a price really works for global government bonds; and over time we extended this to mortgages, interest rate swaps, corporate bonds, and ETFs. So it’s become an amazing company that was really built off a very basic and simple idea.

TWST: Since the internet became more mainstream for the general public in the 1990s, were there other platforms starting to serve markets besides the government side that Tradeweb played in?

Mr. Hult : There was always Bloomberg looming out there at a minimum as a data company that was beginning to show prices for things. But we were really the first to pioneer around the trading or execution side of it in these markets.

In an interesting but probably not surprising way, there was some resistance to it. Because from the trader’s perspective, as you can imagine, opaqueness was their friend. The more transparency there was, in some ways the more resistance we encountered.

But the truth of the matter is, from the very, very beginning, the institutional client base loved it. Because it made their lives obviously more efficient, provided them transparency, and allowed them to get competitive prices in a real-time way they could not replicate over the phone. So there was momentum around it pretty early on.

TWST: How has Tradeweb evolved since then?

Mr. Hult : We continue to evolve, I think, from the concept of expansion. We started off in government bonds but, in a really good way, we didn’t just want to be a one-asset-class company. We wanted to be a global company that could take what we learned in Treasuries and extend that across marketplaces.

We’ve been on a real journey of expansion from government bonds globally to liquid mortgages, to global interest rate swaps, ETFs, credit, emerging markets, and money market businesses like repurchase agreements. We’ve been on this continual journey of connecting the dots and getting into more and more of these marketplaces, providing the transparency and electronification that the client base really wants.

I would say in a very interesting way, one thing that we’ve learned in this journey is that once markets begin to go electronic, that’s often the starting point for innovation. Even in our first market of government bonds, in a marketplace that is now mainstream electronic, there still is continual evolution around innovation and protocols. It’s been fun to take markets in a transparent way and then continue to innovate and make these markets more interesting.

TWST: Are your clients mainly institutional investors or are you also focused on retail?

Mr. Hult : We have a four-pronged and really amazing network. I think if I was going to go back in time, I would say one of the things the company did really well in the very beginning was to establish this very formidable and real network of clients.

Think about our clients as institutional clients, so that hits the hedge funds, the insurance companies, asset managers, and central banks. Then think about the fact that we also have a wholesale business where banks connect with other banks to exchange liquidity in the wholesale markets. We also have a retail network, which encompasses the advisers, the RIAs of the world, around providing fixed income products to their clients. Then lastly, we have a really important network of corporates.

We’re always really, really oriented toward our clients. I would say this: We are a technology company first and foremost, but we really try to be a technology company that lives and breathes in the financial services ecosystem. Staying close to this amazing network of clients has been, in some ways, our secret sauce from the very beginning.

TWST: Looking back since your founding, what would you say have been the major milestones?

Mr. Hult : A major milestone was executing those first electronic trades in government bonds way back in the day, where you’re dealing with professional clients and you’re actually able to accomplish something meaningfully different for your first clients. We never take our eyes off that early success that we had; it was really, really important.

We wanted to remove siloes between markets, so the concept of expansion early on, making the kind of inroads that we made into the mortgage area, was a very big deal for us.

And then the third thing I would say is the global interest rate swaps market and how we were able to navigate the regulatory landscape post-financial crisis and Dodd-Frank. Really establishing ourselves as the leading global derivatives platform is probably still one of the most important things that the company has done.

Lastly, since becoming a public company in 2019, we’ve shown that we have the competitive chops to be quite successful in credit. Quite honestly, that may be the most important milestone so far.

TWST: When did you do that?

Mr. Hult : It was a little bit before our IPO in 2019, but our success and market share gains in credit really accelerated post-2020. We’re continually figuring out which are the protocols inside of the business that work well for the clients. And so it’s been fun.

TWST: You’ve recently launched a dedicated Kalshi pricing page, which is interesting especially as predictive markets are all over the news right now. Why was this move important for Tradeweb?

Mr. Hult : I think we have an orientation to be able to keep our eye on our day jobs, which is continuing to be leaders and expanding in these traditional financial markets that we’re known for. At the same time, I think we have a very strong perspective that the frontier markets in our space are, without question, important and becoming more important.

We identified predictive markets as something that’s moving towards the realm of having institutional buy-in. We wanted to find the right partner, and we felt very strongly that Kalshi was the right partner for us. At a minimum, the table stakes around this is going to be that predictive markets data is ultimately going to be something that the professional marketplace will want.

As I describe all of that to you, we also have a view that all Kalshi markets are not created equally. So the betting on Taylor Swift’s wedding date is not unbelievably interesting to us. But as there are financially oriented predictive markets that have a lot of ultimate liquidity in them and become a direct way to play event-driven outcomes, we want to be on the right side of that evolution and begin to integrate that liquidity into ours.

It’s been a really interesting challenge for us to be the kind of company that’s going to be living and breathing in all of these traditional asset classes, these traditional marketplaces. But at the same time, we’re going to look to our right, and we’re going to see that there’s amazingly interesting innovations that continue to happen outside of traditional markets and more into the frontier space. We’re the right kind of company to partner with firms in that zone, too.

TWST: Is there any hesitation given that predictive markets are being scrutinized by Congress now in the wake of some of the kinds of betting that have taken place?

Mr. Hult : I don’t know if it’s hesitancy. I would say we are eyes wide open, very well aware all the time. We have a very strong reputation. I think we have a reputation of being a very credible marketplace, and there’s a lot of noise in the space. We know that, and we see that, and we see the headlines around all of that.

That being said, I think it’s a smaller bet that we’re making. We still feel very strongly it’s an important bet, and sometimes you have to make the right bet on seeing that there will be changes in behavior and changes in outcome. We’re willing to do that. But as the expression goes, “Where do you go to get your reputation back? You don’t.”

We take our reputation as an industry leader and a trusted platform in our network of clients extremely seriously. Small doses around this fits us really well, and we’re comfortable with it. We’re moving forward with a partnership there, and we think it’s going to work out.

TWST: Let’s move on to talk about your growth strategy. I understand you’re in a quiet period now so we can’t discuss your Q2 results, but would you shed a little light on your M&A activity? You’ve done a number of deals in the last couple of years, most recently acquiring Institutional Cash Distribution — ICD — r8fin and Yieldbroker. What did these firms give Tradeweb that it didn’t already have, and are you looking for more?

Mr. Hult : We’re always exceptionally oriented towards adding to this vaunted network that we have. All three of those deals added significant participants into our network.

I feel very strongly that we have an excellent culture at Tradeweb, and so anytime we’re looking at an M&A deal, we want to make sure that the company is additive and fits into our culture in a way that works for us.

Anytime that we can pick up — we have amazing developers and amazing technologists at the company — but anytime we feel like we can pick up a piece of technology faster than we can build, we’ll do that as well.

We’ve largely gotten here as builders, not acquirers. A lot of the growth that we’ve had as a company has come through our own organic build and our own eyes around where we see opportunities for technology to be applied into these marketplaces. That being said, as a public company, we’re ambitious.

Going forward, I think the general view is that we’re going to have opportunities to continue to make the right kind of consolidation plays inside of our business, and we’re going to be very, very open to that. The core belief is that the growth that we have, the credibility that we have as a company making the right kind of acquisitions, is only going to lead us towards more potential outcomes. But we’re going to be rigorous first and foremost around companies that fit our eye.

TWST: What would that look like?

Mr. Hult : It looks like continuing to add companies that grow our network and add into our network.

TWST: What were you looking for when you found, for example, ICD?

Mr. Hult : We were looking to add in this amazing client base of corporates into our world. We felt like that was a great business, and obviously we felt like the balance sheets of the corporate client base were going to continue to grow, and we wanted to be a part of that activity.

At the same time, as you know very well, the integration of these kinds of deals is really important, so we also felt that there would be a significant appetite to introduce our marketplaces into these corporate clients, and we were going to be able to benefit from that as well.

TWST: So ICD still exists, but Tradeweb sits inside it?

Mr. Hult : Well it’s really become Tradeweb’s corporate client business. It works for us because we love their business model, and at the same time, we’re able to cross-sell our businesses, our marketplaces, into a client base that we hadn’t had before.

We love Apple; they hadn’t been a meaningful client of ours until the ICD acquisition. So it’s kind of fun to continually fine-tune this big, giant network of clients that we have.

TWST: Going forward, are you going to look for other deals where you can have that same kind of structure, or does that necessarily matter to you?

Mr. Hult : Yeah, that structure matters to us. It’s always sort of the 1+1=3 dynamic that matters to us a lot.

TWST: You’re scooping up a bigger client base by doing these acquisitions.

Mr. Hult : For sure. You’re scooping up a bigger client base. We’re taking advantage of the liquidity and the leverage that we have inside of our own businesses. But we’re pretty open and creative to all different types of deals.

TWST: Do you want to be approached with deals?

Mr. Hult : We get approached all the time from amazingly interesting startup AI companies that come to us and say, “How we can help you get your development cycle going faster,” or things like that. We’ll be open-minded around that.

We’re always looking for deals to be financially accretive to us, and it’s always going to be about the shareholder interest first and foremost. We are in a little bit of a sweet spot in our business because, as you know, debt markets continue to rise. There’s a tremendous amount of back-and-forth on where interest rates go from here.

The legacy banks that have been a big part of our client base forever are doing exceptionally well in the businesses that we live in. You saw the earnings, they were just off the charts last week. At the same time, the non-bank liquidity providers, firms like Jane Street and Citadel Securities, are careening into our world with a lot of ambition and looking to pick up market share and make money in the businesses that we are in.

That’s a really, really good environment for the marketplace and for companies like Tradeweb. So we feel like we’re in a strong position around our existing businesses. At the same time, being open-minded around change is fundamentally important.

So yeah, we’re interested. We take a lot of phone calls, and we’ll have a lot of meetings around what’s out there, what aren’t we seeing, what does the crypto market look like in two years, will there be really interesting institutional behavior, will a client want to buy a government bond and exposure to gold and exposure to Bitcoin at the same time. We’re always very creative around what the world’s going to look like, or try to be.

TWST: If you take a step back and look at the entire electronic trading sector, there’s been some volatility  — high interest rates, possibility of future rate hikes, the war. How is the sector managing through this environment and is it preparing for a bumpy road ahead?

Mr. Hult : What’s that expression — “Nobody knows anything”? It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. What we would say very strongly is we really try to be laser-focused on things that we can control.

We know we have a great business, we know we connect with our clients all the time, we know there’s a lot of wind at our sails around the continued electronification of the marketplaces that we live and breathe in, and we know that we’re the kind of company that likes to spend time with our clients on solving problems. I think if you focus on those things, you’re on the right path.

And the other stuff, it’s not just noise, because obviously it affects us, stock price affects us, and all of those things. We live in the real world. But ultimately, we try to separate out the things that we can control versus the things that just exist out there in the marketplace that are beyond our control. I think when you think like that, you put yourself in a pretty good position.

TWST: Would you elaborate a little more on the headwinds for the sector?

Mr. Hult : I think the headwinds for the sector are around the unknown of what technology brings to the equation. What you’re getting more and more is, do marketplaces change, and do they change in such dramatic ways that I can’t tell who will be the winners and the losers five years from now or 10 years from now?

I have a very, very strong belief that it’s the kind of companies that ultimately create and produce technology in the right way, that stay close to their clients around problem-solving, and that have the kind of reputation to continue to be the partner to build markets that will be the winners.

It’s an unusual time. There’s no doubt about that. Four months ago, there were AI winners and losers, and then that shifted a few months later, and then that will shift again a few months later. We knew what perpetual future contracts were nine months ago, but we didn’t know that they would become in the mainstream of conversation. It just shows you how quickly the world changes.

But you focus on what you can control. From my perspective, when I think about the business that we have, I start with scale. We were over $2 billion in revenue last year, and we’re having a very good year this year. So the scale is real.

And then you go into growth, so we’ve had significant years in a row with double-digit revenue growth. Then we’ve had +50% margins and the ability to expand our margins as a company as we’ve created scale and created growth.

When you take those three things together — scale, growth and profitability — I feel like we’re in a little bit of rarefied air as a company that does all three. That makes me confident that we’re going to be the kind of company that navigates change really well.

That being said, you never take anything for granted. So the concept of not taking your eye off the ball and maintaining an intensity around change, I think, is fundamentally important.

TWST: How does Tradeweb differentiate itself among its peers?

Mr. Hult : Meet the management team. Spend time with management teams. I think the more investors get to know management teams, I think that’s a really good starting point.

I think past records matter, but really at the end of the day, when you close your eyes and imagine what the world’s going to look like, imagine what kind of companies are going to navigate the future the best.

I feel like that’s going to be a combination of companies that really understand the markets that they’re in, companies that really understand what their clients want, and ultimately that multi-asset-class marketplace that has the kind of leverage around deploying technology from one market to another, I think, is a really, really important premise around continued growth going forward.

TWST: What’s important for people to know about your company.

Mr. Hult : I would say this: It’s an amazing privilege to be the CEO of a public company. I take it very, very seriously. I’ve been at the company for, as I mentioned, 26 years, so a lot of pride of authorship around that. We have a great management team, we work together really well, so it’s certainly way beyond and way past me.

A technology company that lives and breathes as a public market, not always easy. So I’ll be very, very blunt with you about that, because sometimes change can occur at different rates than you expect. When you’re a public company, as you know very well, you have public shareholders, and they expect results sometimes within parameters, and it doesn’t always happen that way.

But from my perspective, one of the things that I do and the team does really well is stay patient, constantly making the kind of investments for medium- and longer-term change. I think that’s a really, really important ethos as we’re navigating this next leg of growth.

TWST: Lastly, if you had to name just one major thing you have in store for the future, what would it be?

Mr. Hult : I think navigating AI is, without question, one of the most important things for a company, including ours.

One of the most important things that we will think about is really how our clients use AI and machine learning to continue to find best prices in the market. That’s going to hold true for traditional markets and frontier markets. We have exceptional data and the exceptional ability to produce technology that works for our clients, and our goal will be to have a leadership role around AI in terms of our clients’ search for best price and liquidity in these marketplaces.

The great news is our clients are continuing to get more and more sophisticated, and they look to us as the problem solver for sophisticated problems, and that’s a great place to be.

TWST: Thank you.