UK Financial Watchdog Faces Claim Bond Tape Auction Was Flawed

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority is facing allegations that its auction process for a bond data project was unfair because of a technical issue and conflict of interest.

Fintech firm Ediphy Analytics Ltd., which lost the bid to run the so-called consolidated bond tape, a project to aggregate fixed income data in the UK into one single stream, last month filed a case to the High Court challenging the FCA’s selection process under the Procurement Act 2023.

Ediphy alleges that the auction was flawed because its bid in one of the rounds wasn’t correctly registered, forcing it out of the ...