There is also some concern about job losses and loss of market access by smaller banks. Changing an organization's behavior is difficult and takes sustained effort, said DirectBooks CEO Rich Kerschner. Interest in automation grew as desks struggled with corporate bond volumes that touched a record $1.78 trillion in 2020. Three years into it, only a small proportion of orders and allocation messages for a new bond were going through DirectBooks. Once in place, hundreds of investors using OMS platforms could send their order messages and receive allocation messages through DirectBooks, said Kerschner.

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Persons: Carlo Allegri, Rich Kerschner, Spencer Lee, salespeople, Daniel Botoff, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, DirectBooks, Chris Sztam, BlackRock's Aladdin, RBC's Botoff, Shankar Ramakrishnan, Anna Driver Organizations: New York Stock, REUTERS, Bloomberg, underwriters, RBC Capital Markets, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP, Citi, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, P Global Market Intelligence, Development, Thomson Locations: Manhattan, New York City , New York, U.S, Wells, DirectBooks, Charles