Tradeweb Markets (TW) began trading on the Nasdaq on Thur 4 April 2019

• Tradeweb Markets, an online bond-trading platform, went public Thursday at $27 a share but opened on the Nasdaq at $34.26, a significant premium.
• Original price talk of 27.2 million shares at $24 to $26 was twice raised, eventually settling at 40 million shares at $27.
• The company is controlled by private-equity firm Blackstone (NYSE:BX), which acquired it last year as part of the takeover of Thomson Reuters' financial-data business.

Tradeweb raises $1.1 billion in year’s No. 2 IPO

Tradeweb Markets Inc. raised $1.1 billion in the second-largest U.S. initial public offering this year, after again increasing the number of shares it was selling and then pricing them above the marketed range.

The bond and derivative trading platform sold 40 million shares for $27 apiece Wednesday, according to a statement. Tradeweb had originally planned to sell 27.3 million shares for $24 to $26 each and had boosted the size of the offering Tuesday to 36.25 million shares to buy back more of the stock held by its bank investors.

The IPO values the New York-based company at about $6 billion based on its filings.

Tradeweb intends to use proceeds to buy shares held by eight of the 11 large banks that own stakes in the company, including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS) and UBS Group, according to its registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Despite a slow start, 2019 is shaping up to be a blockbuster year for U.S. IPOs. Lyft Inc.'s $2.34 billion IPO week has been the biggest listing this year. Levi Strauss & Co.'s $623 million offering in February ranked third. Tradeweb's IPO is also the biggest for a financial services company in the U.S. since online lender GreenSky Inc. raised $874 million in May.

The offering follows benefits administrator Alight Inc.'s decision in March to postpone plans to raise up to $800 million in an IPO. Alight and Tradeweb are both owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group, which led the $17 billion acquisition last year of Tradeweb parent Refinitiv from Thomson Reuters.

Affiliates of Refinitiv will continue to hold about 54% of Tradeweb's outstanding common stock, according to filings.

Tradeweb, founded in 1996, builds and runs electronics markets for trading government bonds, derivatives, exchange-traded funds and other financial instruments over the counter. It handled an average of $549 billion in daily trades in 2018, according to its IPO prospectus.

JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley led the offering. Tradeweb started trading Thursday under the symbol TW on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, according to the statement.