MarketAxess, an electronic marketplace bidding to modernise the way bonds are traded, is building its presence in the staid world of European private banking in its latest push to vanquish the telephone.

Electronic trading, long the standard in many financial markets, including virtually all equities trading, is making a steady advance into one of the final redoubts of buying and selling via telephone: the market for corporate bonds. But voice-broking, as it is known, remains common practice for bonds at many banks.