LONDON, Sept 25 Reuters Google Cloud, Norway39;s sovereign wealth fund and Swiss bank UBS have joined forces to back a bid to run Britain39;s realtime record of transactions in bond markets, the fixed income technology firm leading the plan told Reuters.

British regulators last year unveiled proposals to build a consolidated tape that would collate market data across stock and bond markets, with a bond data feed launching first, to help investors spot the best deals and boost the appeal of UK capital markets.

Long a feature of Wall Street, the European Union has approved a law requiring trading platforms hand over price data for bonds and stocks, for a fee, to an operator.

Bond trading is fragmented across multiple venues and often done bilaterally rather than via an exchange, limiting price transparency and arming some players with more information than others.

Britain39;s Financial Conduct Authority said last month it expected to begin a tender to choose a firm to run a bond tape by end2024, and the industry expects one to be running by late 2026.

Londonbased Ediphy, a technology provider for fixed income markets, said in a statement on Wednesday it was launching fairCT alongside several firms, also including Cboe Global Markets, FactSet and TP ICAP, to be the UK tape operator.

After previous regulatory efforts to build one fizzled, we are starting to get much more confidence that a tape is viable, said Chris Murphy, CEO of Ediphy and UBS39; former head of Global…