A Canadian startup seeks to shed light on bond issuance加拿大一家创业公司试图简化债券发行 WITH the exception of a few governments big enough to run their own auctions, anyone wishing to issue bonds must seek bankers’ help.除了少数大国政府能够自己拍卖债券，其他任何人想要发行债券都必须找银行帮忙 A hefty fee will buy assistance in calibrating the size, structure and timing of a bond issue, as well as connections to lots of buyers.付一大笔费用就可以获得以下帮助：校准债券发行的规模、结构和时机，还有与众多买家建立联系 And once a bank has agreed to underwrite an issue, it bears the risk of failing to get a good price for the bonds. 一旦银行同意承销一只债券的发行，它就要承担无法为债券拿到好价钱的风险But the process is old-fashioned and inefficient (the head of bond origination at one American bank jokes that “not a lot has changed since 1933”), and the accuracy of the advice is hard to gauge.但这个过程过时又低效（一家美国银行的债券发行部主管开玩笑说，这一行“自1933年以来就没有多大变化”），而且难以衡量建议的准确性 Overbond, a financial-technology startup in Toronto, wants to change all that. 位于多伦多的金融科技创业公司Overbond想要改变这一切Investment bankers responsible for bond issuance still operate largely by feel, calling up asset managers to get a sense of demand, rather than by crunching numbers. 负责发行债券的投行人士依然主要凭感觉行事，给资产管理公司打打电话感觉一下需求，而不是依靠数据分析Rules against insider trading mean they cannot talk directly with their trader colleagues. 防止内幕交易的规则让他们无法直接与交易员同事沟通Data on existing bonds are more abundant. 相比之下，已发行债券的数据更丰富些In America, for instance, information on the price, timing, yield and volume of all bond transactions must be reported publicly within 15 minutes. 例如，在美国，所有债券交易的价格、时机、收益和数量的信息必须在15分钟内公开报告But so far, comparing primary and secondary markets has been difficult. 但到目前为止，要比较一级市场和二级市场仍很困难By crunching a wide array of public data, Overbond seeks to provide a link between the two. Overbond处理了大量公开数据，试图在这两者之间建立关联Its main offering is a set of machine-learning algorithms powered by neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence, that predict the timing and pricing of new bond issues. 该公司的主要产品是一套由神经网络（一种人工智能）驱动的机器学习算法，能够预测新债券发行的时间和定价The service is already fully in place for the Canadian corporate-bond market, and partly so for the American one. 针对加拿大企业债券市场的服务已经完全就绪，针对美国市场的服务则已部分到位The algorithms crunch through credit ratings and real-time data on secondary trading for a firm and its peers, among other things. 这些算法为一家公司及其同业分析信用评级和二级市场实时交易数据等信息Recent predictions for the yield on new bond issues have been, on average, off by less than 0.02 percentage points.平均而言，最近对新发行债券收益率的预测误差不到0.02个百分点 A subscription buys tailored estimates of demand for new bonds, including the interest rate the market is willing to bear. 付费用户将获得对于新债券需求量的定制化预测，包括市场愿意承受的利率This helps corporate treasurers gauge market conditions and decide when to issue bonds and in what maturity. 这有助于企业的财务主管评估市场状况，并决定发行债券的时间和期限Of the 200 or so Canadian corporations that issue debt frequently, 81 are signed up.在经常发行债券的大约200家加拿大企业中，有81家已经与该公司签约 Investors can use a basic version of the service without charge, partly because the firm collects data from them that then feed into the algorithms. 投资者可以免费使用这项服务的基础版本，一定程度上是因为该公司要从他们那里收集数据，然后输入到算法中They can, for instance, get estimates of the timing of the next bond issue to hit the market, using data on the timing of previous issues, issues by similar companies and balance-sheet data. 例如，他们可以利用以往债券发行的时间、相似企业发行债券及资产负债表数据，来预测下一次债券发行的时机Around half of Canada’s institutional bond investors use it in some way.加拿大有一半左右的债券机构投资者都以某种方式使用这种服务 Canada’s corporate-bond market is a relative tiddler, with a total of 604 new bond issues in the past two years. 加拿大的企业债券市场规模相对较小，过去两年总共发行了604只新债券Its investment-banking community is small, too; Overbond reckons that every new bond issue passes through one of just seven individuals.它的投资银行群体也很小——Overbond认为每一只新债券都是由7家投行之一发行的 But the firm now hopes to break into America, the world’s largest corporate-bond market with around 3,000 new issues annually. There, issuance is much more fragmented. 但该公司现在希望进入美国这个世界最大的企业债券市场，这里每年发行约3000只新债券。发行渠道也分散得多Around 40 banks are active in bond origination, and no firm has more than a 12.5% market share, according to Thomson Reuters, a financial-data firm. 根据金融数据公司汤森路透的数据，约有40家银行从事债券发行，没有一家的市场份额超过12.5%Vuk Magdelinic, Overbond’s founder and chief executive, says that starting small in Canada gave the firm the chance to perfect its algorithms. Overbond的创始人兼首席执行官武克·马德里尼（Vuk Magdelinic）表示，从较小的加拿大市场做起给公司提供了完善算法的机会It has refined its timing-prediction algorithm for the American market (see chart for an example on Microsoft). Some actively managed bond funds have already expressed interest它已经为美国市场改进了预测时机的算法（如图，以微软为例）。一些主动型债券基金已表达了兴趣. It has opened a New York office and is seeking funding from American investors. Bankers, perhaps unsurprisingly, proclaim themselves sceptical that something as sophisticated as bond origination could be pried from their grasp by a fintech challenger. Overbond在纽约设立了办事处，并正在争取美国投资者的资金。 或许并不令人意外的是，银行家们表示了怀疑他们认为债券发行这么复杂，是不会被一家金融科技挑战者从他们手中撬走的Instead, they think they spy an opportunity. 相反，他们认为自己看到了一个机会Some have expressed interest in using Overbond’s timing algorithm to help spot firms in need of financing before they come asking for it. 一些银行表示，有兴趣使用Overbond的时机算法来提前找到有融资需求的企业In finance, as elsewhere, machines and humans may be more powerful together than either is alone与其他领域一样，在金融领域，机器和人的联手可能比任何一方单打独斗都更为强大
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