Morgan Stanley appointed Pankaj Dhake as a new electronic sales trader, based in Mumbai. Dhake joins Morgan Stanley from CLSA, where he spent nearly seven years, most recently as an electronic sales trader. This followed a stint as an associate at CLSA – a position he held for nearly two years. Prior to joining CLSA, Dhake was a senior quantitative researcher at WorldQuant. Elsewhere in his career, Dhake served as a global equity derivatives trader at UBS.

Eric Kohler was appointed to Kepler Cheuvreux’s high touch trading team based in New York. Most recently Kohler worked as an international equity trader at Citi for more than three and a half years having previously served as a commodities sales and trading analyst at the firm. He has also served stints at both Morgan Stanley and UBS Wealth Management. In the role, he is set to help the firm grow its execution footprint and expertise across North America – a key strategic base for Kepler Cheuvreux.

Jamie Crank was named group executive technology and data at the Australian stock exchange, ASX. Prior to this appointment, he was general manager in the trading and markets division, and before that general manager of information and connectivity services for ASX.  He will officially begin his role on 9 September. According to ASX the appointment followed “an extensive external and internal search process”. Sydney-based Crank has worked in the industry across various exchanges for two decades. He has previously served at Chi-X Australia and the London Stock Exchange.

Crédit Agricole appointed Ryan Jones vice president, Latin American (LatAm) RFX trader, based in New York. Jones joins Crédit Agricole from Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking where he spent nearly three years, most recently as vice president, LatAm FX trader. Prior to that, Jones held the same position as an associate. Before joining Crédit Agricole, Jones spent three years at Standard Chartered Bank – also based in New York – most recently as a LatAm RFX trader.

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Didier Gaffinel

Through the partnership, Kepler Cheuvreux has established a local presence in the UAE through the opening of a new office in the Dubai International Financial Centre and will initially cover equity research and distribution in the Gulf region including the UAE and Saudi Arabia. 

The move follows the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) granting Kepler Cheuvreux has been a license to operate as an authorised firm and provide equity research and distribution on 26 July this year. 

Didier Gaffinel, deputy general manager and head of global coverage and investment banking at Crédit Agricole CIB, said: “[The] partnership with Kepler Cheuvreux has proven to be highly successful in Europe with a number of flagship transactions. The extension allows us to further strengthen our client offering in the MENA region.

“We are fully committed to the success of this new initiative and are strongly convinced of the value-add we bring to MENA ECM issuers through our platform.”

Crédit Agricole CIB already has an established presence in MENA, with offices in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and through this partnership with Kepler is set to further strengthen its offering in the region through the addition of equity capital markets activities. 

Read more: Kepler Cheuvreux extends equity research deal with CIBC

“The extension of our ECM partnership with Crédit Agricole CIB allows us to respond to the strong interest from institutional investors in the MENA region where ECM activity is booming. This new step in the history of Kepler Cheuvreux demonstrates the efficiency of our model and strengthens the group’s multi-local position,” asserted Laurent Quirin, chair of the supervisory board of Kepler Cheuvreux.

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RFX is a patented LTX trading protocol that allows for liquidity aggregation, price improvement, flexibility, and best execution.

Jones joins Crédit Agricole from Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking where he spent nearly three years, most recently as vice president, LatAm FX trader.

Prior to that, Jones held the same position as an associate.

Before joining Crédit Agricole, Jones spent three years at Standard Chartered Bank – also based in New York – most recently as a LatAm RFX trader.

This followed international graduate position at the bank which he held for 10 months.

Jones announced his appointment in a social media post.

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Barclays, BlackRock, Crédit Agricole CIB, Société Générale and UniCredit have confirmed their intention to explore the creation of a user-governed model just months after a group of European exchanges confirmed they too had plans to collaborate to develop an application for an equities tape.

The buy- and sell-side collaborative project will now assess the best-positioned technology and providers to launch a pre- and post-trade equity consolidated tape service.

Read more – European exchanges to collaborate on consolidated tape for equities

As part of next steps, the buy- and sell-side group have confirmed they have approached the European exchange group initiative announced on 16 February to explore the possibility of collaborating on a strategic project.

“We support the development of a competitively priced pre-trade consolidated tape for all asset classes,” Baillie Gifford’s head of trading, Adam Conn, told The TRADE.

“We are equally keen to ensure the post-trade benefits are not overlooked. One of the great advantages of a properly defined consolidated tape with standardised flagging (preferably using FIX Trading’s MMT typography) is the ability to identify the exact executable volume traded. This data is used by asset managers in liquidity and capacity analysis. If it is easily and accurately available, it will, by definition, reduce systemic risk in the market and provide even greater protection to the end investor.”

Plans for a pre- and post-trade consolidated tape model are set to be debated by the European Parliament, European Commission and the Council of the European Union in the process of Trilogue next week, commencing on Tuesday, as part of a wider overhaul of Mifid II regulation in Europe.

The consolidated tape has become one of the most divisive and political issues in the industry, in particular whether or not to include pre-trade data.

As part of a joint statement Barclays, BlackRock, Crédit Agricole CIB, Société Générale and UniCredit confirmed that they support the current proposals to include pre-trade data and will reach out to the legislator to share this view.

“We are delighted that this group of sell- and buy-side institutions share our long-held view that a real-time pre-trade tape would bring significant benefits to investors of all types, and thereby help grow the European equity market ecosystem,” president of Cboe Europe, Natan Tiefenbrun told The TRADE.

“Any equities consolidated tape must contain real-time pre-trade data, to bring sufficient value to consumers to ensure commercial viability of the consolidated tape operator. A pre-trade tape will enhance investor protection, price formation and market transparency by ensuring investors are informed of the full liquidity and best available prices across EU markets.”

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Credit Agricole’s Indosuez Wealth Management division has become the first institution to implement Bloomberg’s Rule Builder to automate its ETF trading operations.

Following a pilot period, the wealth management firm has become the first client to implement Bloomberg’s Rule Builder, which is a trade automation tool that can be used across fixed income, FX and ETFs, equities and futures.

The Rule Builder’s no-code solution to break down incoming ETF order flow and separate low- and high-touch orders. Low-touch orders are sent to Bloomberg venues to be executed without any further manual intervention, freeing up traders’ time to focus on high-touch and complex order flow. 

“There are clear benefits to automating ETF trading, as this type of operation is highly requested by our customers and part of our daily activities. Since using Rule Builder, we have seen a significant increase in order flow, as well as a marked improvement in the quality of trade execution,” said Cyrille Nahabedian, head of capital markets solutions at Indosuez Wealth Management. 

The wealth management division at Credit Agricole is already an existing customer of Bloomberg’s equities execution management system, EMSX, and its transaction cost analysis solution, BTCA.

“The strength of our solution is that it allows firms to deploy automation quickly and easily, by writing automation rules directly on the Bloomberg Terminal resulting in seamless trade execution on our systems, which alleviates the need to integrate the technology into their own in-house systems,” added Ravi Sawhney, global head of trade automation and analytics at Bloomberg.

Bloomberg has made several moves to enhance its capabilities recently as demand for automated pricing and execution has increased. Earlier this month, the firm extended its portfolio trading offering with a basket building tool that allows participants to use data and analytics to optimise baskets in the fixed income space.

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Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Agricole and Credit Suisse have been fined a total of €28 million in Europe after colluding on bond trading activity as a cartel.

The European Commission fined the three banks after traders in their US dollar supra-sovereign, sovereign and agency (SSA) bonds divisions participated in the cartel in the European secondary market.

The traders exchanged sensitive information, coordinated on prices and aligned their trading strategies via chatrooms and Bloomberg Terminals for five years. The manipulative activity affected secondary market trading in US dollar SSA bonds for the entire European Economic Area, the Commission said. 

Deutsche Bank had also taken part in the cartel but was not fined alongside the other investment banks as it revealed the existence of the cartel.

“Today we have issued a decision against Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Crédit Agricole, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, whose traders colluded on trading strategies, exchanged sensitive pricing information and coordinated on prices,” said Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president of the Commission in charge of competition policy.

“The behaviour of the investment banks restricted competition in a market in which investment and pension funds regularly buy and sell bonds on behalf of their investors and pensioners. The cartel harmed the financial markets and today’s decision sends a clear message that the Commission will not tolerate any type of collusive behaviour.”

Of the €28 million penalty, Bank of America Merrill Lynch received the most severe fine of €12, 642,000, followed by Credit Suisse who received a fine of €11,859,000, and Crédit Agricole who received a fine of €3,993,000.

The fine marks the latest crackdown on cartel activity within large investment banks by the Commission. In 2019, Barclays, RBS, Citi, JP Morgan and MUFG paid a combined €1.07 billion in penalties for their involvement in a cartel that rigged FX spot prices for 11 currencies.

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Girolami will reporting directly to LCH Group CEO Daniel Maguire, with responsibility for expanding the clearing house’s growth strategy across its business lines, including services for interest rate derivatives, FX, equities and fixed income.

“LCH has an impressive track record of partnering with the markets that it serves, in order to drive innovation and provide best-in-class risk management. Its open access approach and strong customer focus are unique, and I’m honoured to be asked to lead LCH Ltd for the next stage of its growth,” commented Girolami.

Most recently, Girolami held the position of deputy CEO of French bank Credit Agricole’s corporate and investment banking division, having joined the institution in 2015 as global head of financial markets.

Prior to this, Girolami spent seven years with Standard Chartered Bank from 2008 to 2015, and held previous roles at Bear Stearns and BNP Paribas.

She will replace the current LCH chief executive, Martin Pluves, who is due to step down from the position on 31 July to pursue other opportunities.

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Launched by Droit Financial Technologies, the upgraded ADEPT service offers a digital version of MiFID II law and provides users with instant verification and specific source text for real-time decision making.

The platform aims to ensure regulatory compliance with every transaction by producing automated trading decisions, with analysis to decipher whether clients are up to date with regulations across their counterparties and geographies.

BNP Paribas, the corporate and investment banking arm of Credit Agricole, Goldman Sachs’ broker-dealer and asset management businesses, and UBS are among the firms that have adopted the platform.

“Droit’s ADEPT product is a central part of our eligibility architecture for MiFID II for both our broker/dealer and GSAM businesses, across a range of obligations,” said Jo Hannaford, managing director, technology division at Goldman Sachs.

“Droit’s innovative approach to the digitisation of regulation and eligibility, and the evolution of their ADEPT product fits well with our overall strategy.”

MiFID II is the latest regulation implemented in ADEPT which has been live since March 2014, alongside all G20 regulatory regimes, global CCPs and executions.

“Digitisation is much more than an exercise in tagging data; it’s the complete analytic structuring of one of the financial markets’ largest ever pieces of legislation,” added Satya Pemmaraju, CEO of Droit.

“Droit provides the full stack, starting with digitising the actual legal texts into an open, standard, machine-readable format through to standard executable implementations within real-time systems. As regulations live and breathe, so our clients’ implementations and legal sources evolve in synchronicity.”

In 2016, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and prop trading firm DRW led a $16 million investment in Droit Financial Technologies. The funding was used to support the expansion of its global operations, sale and marketing teams, and the opening of a new office in Singapore.

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Crédit Agricole CIB has acquired an equity stake in blockchain specialist SETL in the bank’s first investment in a FinTech company.

Launched in 2015 by a team of financial veterans including former Chi-X CEO Peter Randall, SETL provides a multi-asset, multi-currency institutional payment and settlements service using blockchain technology.

The OpenCSD platform allows market participants to move cash and assets between each other, allowing for immediate and final settlement of transactions.

“SETL has developed a private blockchain that already integrates the specific matters of the banking industry,” said François Marion, deputy CEO of Crédit Agricole CIB.

“This minority stake…paves the way for an industrial partnership that will contribute to the work already undertaken by Crédit Agricole CIB on the blockchain technology over the last 2 years and will enable Crédit Agricole CIB to speed up the digitalisation of its processes and exchanges with its customers.”

The decision to take an equity stake is the latest stage in the relationship between the two firms which have been collaborating on blockchain technology.

Randall, chief executive at SETL, claimed the firm has successfully deployed various environments capable of processing more than 80,000 transactions per second across over 100 million accounts concurrently in a globally distributed configuration.

“As a result of this technological capacity SETL have already received significant further indications of interest in our OpenCSD product,” he said.

“SETL continues to develop market infrastructures, like IZNES which now has over 20 major European fund managers and will be the largest global blockchain by both value and volume."

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Crédit Agricole CIB is to replace its trading legacy systems for interest rate derivatives and FX trading through a partnership with Orchestrade Financial Systems.

Orchestrade’s capital markets technology platform for cross-asset trading will be implemented to improve the bank’s risk performance, reduce costs and ensure regulatory compliance.

All front-to-middle office processing of vanilla and structured products from two legacy platforms at Crédit Agricole will be migrated to Orchestrade’s platform.

Crédit Agricole is the first major bank to overhaul its trading systems with Orchestrade.

Thomas Spitz, global head of the trading division at Crédit Agricole, explained the new platform is modern and well designed.

“This partnership sets a new benchmark for capital markets technology projects inside the bank, enabling us to deliver even greater value to our shareholders,” he said.

Orchestrade said the new systems will allow the bank to benefit from improved efficiency, real-time risk capabilities as well as one consistent platform used by sales, trading, risk and operations.

Chief executive officer at Orchestrade, Hakim Erhili, added: “The successful collaboration with Crédit Agricole CIB confirmed that our platform delivers unmatched performance and operational efficiency, regardless of scale.”

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