Casey Crawford was appointed institutional municipal trader, vice president, at RBC, joining from Citi. New-York based Crawford was previously vice president, municipals trading at Citi having spent a decade with the firm. His previous positions at the bank include: gold international finance analyst, private bank investment analyst and private bank fixed income analyst. Crawford also has experience working at Aon Hewitt and UBS earlier in his career. 

SimCorp appointed Allen Zimmerman as managing director, head of Americas, set to lead SimCorp within the region – including the firm’s analytics business Axioma. His focus will be on defining strategic direction and helping realise SimCorp’s growth aspirations in the Americas. He joined from BlackRock, where he served as a managing director, focusing on business development for the firm’s investment management technology offering since 2015. Zimmerman brings 18 years of experience in financial services, including senior roles with the portfolio analytics and quantitative models businesses at Barclays and Citi. He also has experience in front-office modelling. Based in New York, Zimmerman will report to Oliver Johnson, chief revenue officer, and will focus on furthering growth within the Americas region.    
  
BMO Capital Markets appointed Harj Bagria within its electronic trading division, The TRADE revealed last week. Bagria joined BMO from Credit Suisse, where he spent nearly five years. Most recently, Bagria held an EMEA equity trading position, based in London. Elsewhere in his tenure at Credit Suisse, Bagria held APAC equity trading and electronic sales trading positions, based in Hong Kong. Prior to joining Credit Suisse, Bagria spent two and a half years at Deutsche Bank, most recently as head of electronic execution sales for APAC. This followed an eight-year stint at Citi, where he held electronic sales trading roles in both London and Hong Kong. Elsewhere in his career, Bagria held an analyst position at Lehman Brothers. 
 
Wematch.live appointed David Culshaw as global head of fixed income; a newly created role which reflects the fintech’s expansion into the fixed income space. Culshaw joined Wematch.live from Brevan Howard spinout, SigTech, where he served as global head of business development. Elsewhere, Culshaw held a leadership role at CME Group’s BrokerTec, where he held responsibility for the commercial development of the firm’s dealer-to-client RFQ repo platform across EMEA and North America. Culshaw has a background working with both the buy- and sell-side across a range of financial products including interest rate derivatives, securities financing and cash bonds.  

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New-York based Crawford was previously vice president, municipals trading at Citi having spent a decade with the firm.

His previous positions at the bank include: gold international finance analyst, private bank investment analyst and private bank fixed income analyst.

Crawford also has experience working at Aon Hewitt and UBS earlier in his career.

Read more: Fireside Friday… with RBC’s Hayley McDowell

In April 2023, RBC Capital Markets appointed Charles Liber as its new head of equity derivatives flow sales for Continental Europe, based in Paris. Prior to the move, Liber spent nearly five and a half years at Optiver, most recently serving in a derivatives sales position, based in the Amsterdam. 

Last month, The TRADE revealed that Peter Murden had joined independent outsourced trading services provider, Tourmaline, having most recently served as managing director at RBC. 

Murden has almost 30 years’ experience in the industry having worked several trading roles across the sell-side. His career began at JP Morgan, then Flemings, back in 1994. His equity trading experience covers Asia, Europe, North America, and the UK.

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UK bundling rules are likely to be repealed mid next year, with Europe to follow. Discussions will centre around who pays for research rather than on re-bundling. Although some specialists may see an opportunity here. The question remains as to whether this will have a material impact on SME liquidity. Despite the Swedish Presidency pushing through changes in June, including a single volume cap for dark trading, limitations on SIs and the outlines for a consolidated tape, we’re unlikely to see any major impact next year, perhaps with the exception of the removal of the 4% single venue cap on dark trading, which could be lifted in the early part of the new year. 

The transition to T+1 in the US and the impact this has on the UK and Europe is an obvious theme. Improved post-trade efficiencies and initial regulatory leniency will hopefully make this an easier pill to swallow but funding costs and liquidity impacts are yet to be realised. Changes to UK trade reporting requirements will provide a clearer insight into how much business is done away from the public markets, which may court some regulatory attention. The introduction of a new Designated Reporter Regime will also likely be a key focus although some firms will likely want to continue to report as SI or via the off-book on exchange channel. 

Hayley McDowell, European market structure consultant, RBC Capital Markets 

The buy-side face a dilemma as the UK (and likely the EU) prepare to offer greater flexibility on payments for research. While a full re-bundling is unlikely, we may see an explosion of CSAs as firms look to align their research payment processes globally. As the choice to remain unbundled will be permitted, it might be a slow process for asset managers to make any material changes unless we see larger buy-side firms take the lead on this development. Despite the ongoing uncertainty for participants, 2024 promises to be another eventful year for Pan-European market structure.

Elsewhere, sourcing alternative liquidity will remain a key focus given the continued decline of order book liquidity in 2023. As off-book trading and internalisation grow, concerns about the potential impact on price formation could come to the fore for market participants. With new dark venues preparing to launch early next year, incumbent venues could lose market share in this space. 
 
T+1 will continue to be top of mind as the US and Canada migrate to a shorter settlement cycle in May. As the UK and EU ponder a similar move, reducing market hours could come back into focus, especially given the strained liquidity environment. The LSE’s previous consultation on reducing market hours a few years ago was well received by market participants and it’s unlikely this stance has changed drastically since then. 

Mike Carrodus, chief executive officer, Substantive Research  

Next year will bring more uncertainty for investment research, with a potential ‘rebundling’ of investment research costs with execution costs under Mifid II, and it will be a year of reckoning for market data. The recommendations from Rachel Kent’s UK Investment Research Review are now with the FCA. We’ll see the FCA’s Consultation Paper in February or March 2024, with the final UK rules coming at the end of June. But what rebundling might look like in practice is uncertain – everything depends on how end investors react to being asked to take on asset managers’ research costs once again.  

Also next year, the FCA will reach its conclusion after looking into opaque and inconsistent pricing models and barriers to entry in the wholesale market data market. This is addressing some long-held frustrations on both the buy- and sell-side, regarding these ‘have-to-have’ data products, such as indices, credit ratings and pricing and reference data.  AI will help fund managers sift through their research and data inputs much more efficiently, but will a new deluge of AI-enabled research content make finding what we want actually harder?

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New to Leaders in Trading 2023, this category is designed to recognise those firms and individuals going above and beyond to service and support their clients in light of the numerous regulatory and market structure overhauls taking place across the globe.

Post-Brexit, divergence continues to play a part in the regulatory regime in the UK and Europe, while other major shifts such as the transition to T+1 settlement in the US are likely to significantly impact the way institutions operate.

In light of this, The TRADE has selected Goldman Sachs, Optiver, RBC and TD Cowen for the 2023 shortlist, following their efforts over the last 12 months. 

Goldman Sachs

Over the last 12 months, Goldman Sachs’ market structure and regulatory team, spearheaded by chief operating officer for EMEA equity execution services, Eleanor Beasley, has continued to provide thought-leading content in the context of market structure changes in the EU and UK. Whether that has been covering consultation papers that continue to come from the UK and the EU, or highlighting changes in exchange offerings or migrations, the investment bank has provided insights on what it believes the impact is going to be and what is going to happen to the broader liquidity landscape as a result.

Alongside helping its clients to make sense of regulatory regime changes in Europe and the UK, Goldman Sachs has produced deep dives into regulatory updates and launched a new quarterly market structure podcast – ‘Evolving Equities’ – in which Beasley hosts a new external guest each episode. The quarterly content aims to provide clients with insights to better understand and navigate the equities landscape. Other regular content by Goldman Sachs includes weekly liquidity colour, monthly liquidity analysis, quarterly cost to trade analysis and quarterly developed vs emerging markets liquidity deep dives.

Goldman Sachs’ market structure team works as part of a broader team within the investment bank, including the quant analysts and its SOR strategy team to ensure that market structure and information received from regulators is an integral part of its broader liquidity strategy. 

Optiver

With former TRADE reporter and Rosenblatt analyst, Anish Puaar, at the wheel, non-traditional liquidity provider Optiver has made a significant push into the thought leadership sphere in the last 12 months, aiding both its own counterparties and firms across the wider market in their understanding of the shifting market structure and regulatory landscape.

In the last year, the market maker has published whitepapers and spoken at industry conferences on a variety of topics including: the “anti-competitive nature” of single market-maker exchanges, the benefits and risks of Europe following suit with the US in the pursuit of T+1 settlement, the international financing review (IFR), closing-auction outages and market-maker protections in the options market. As well as the history and uses of short-term options, capital markets recommendations for incoming EU policymakers and the Asia-pacific equity options markets.

The market maker has also introduced a quarterly market structure newsletter for trading counterparties, highlighting statistics like liquidity and trading spreads across cash equities trading venues, and published comment letters on Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) equity market structure proposals. Optiver is committed to voicing its opinion in industry bodies and at industry forums and conferences. Subscribers to the market maker’s Insights email list are up 39% this year, Optiver confirmed.

RBC

Headed up by global head of market structure, Rich Steiner, with consultants on the ground in Europe such as former TRADE editor, Hayley McDowell, RBC’s global market structure team provides insights and content on key themes and trends to assist clients with their execution processes and decisions. They produce monthly recaps, key development notes and in-depth reports on market structure themes which are distributed regularly to clients, as well as curated content on client request.

The team collaborates closely with product to develop the algo suite and logic based on regulatory, liquidity and other market structure changes to improve performance, reduce costs and increase efficiency for its clients. Current themes of focus include liquidity shifts, AI and machine learning, T+1 settlement, upcoming changes to Mifid II research rules and market outages.

Earlier this year, RBC’s Digital Solutions and Client Insights (DSCi3) business expanded Aiden, its proprietary AI-based electronic trading platform, into Europe. The tool is designed to reduce slippage against the volume weighted average price (VWAP) benchmark while minimising market impact. According to RBC, it’s market structure team played a key role in Aiden’s implementation by ensuring the algorithm leverages the nuances of the European trading landscape and informing clients of Aiden’s capabilities and logic with the product and coverage teams.

TD Cowen

TD Cowen’s market structure offering is spearheaded by former Citi, LSEG and Turquoise alumnus James Baugh, now head of European market structure for the firm. TD Cowen, part of TD Securities, aims to put market structure at the core of its electronic trading business. The market structure offering provided by the institution is a “linchpin for liquidity strategies and a driving force behind its distinctive algorithmic trading offerings,” TD Cowen told the TRADE.

The TD Cowen market structure team provides opinions and insights into regulatory and market structure changes, adding depth, perspective and practical value by illustrating how these changes directly affect day-to-day business. The firm also regularly distributes notes and updates to the buy-side community. These updates cover a wide range of topics, such as the implications of diverging regulations post-Brexit, the re-bundling of research, the ban on payment for order flow (PFOF), primary market outages and data centre moves.

Actively engaged in discussions on key topics impacting the industry, TD Cowen participates in most major industry forums and conferences, reaching markets across the continent and as far afield as South Africa. Its involvement with Q15, where James Baugh serves as an advisor to the Equity Quorum, emphasises its role in shaping industry dialogue.

The post Leaders in Trading 2023: Meet the nominees for…. Sell-side Market Structure Excellence appeared first on The TRADE.

Balyasny Asset Management appointed Harrison Chesterton as associate director within its equity finance trading division. According to an update on his social media, Chesterton joined Balyasny from Capstone Investment Advisors after nearly a year and a half, most recently serving as vice president, portfolio finance and treasury trading. Before joining Captsone Investment Advisors, Chesterton spent almost eight years at Barclays Corporate and Investment Bank. Most recently he served as vice president of delta 1 and equity financing – a role he was promoted to after holding the position of assistant vice president for three years.

Electronic market maker Optiver selected Philippe Rizzo to join its institutional sales team, effective from 9 October. Rizzo’s new role will be focused on cash equity sales in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Rizzo will join Optiver from Instinet, where he previously served as a global equity sales trader. Prior to that he held a similar role at Goldman Sachs, based in London. Elsewhere in his career, Rizzo served as a senior global equity trader at Comgest.

Axis Capital Markets appointed Lewis Jones in an institutional sales and trading role. According to an update on social media, Jones joined Axis Capital Markets from IBP Markets, where he served as an equity sales trader for nearly three years. Prior to that, Jones held a corporate broker and equity sales position at ETX Capital. Elsewhere in his career, Jones was self-employed as an options trader at Delta Capital Management; a corporate broking consultant at Turner Pope Investments; and as a proprietary trader at Schneiders Trading Association.

The post People Moves Monday: RBC, UBS, Balyasny Asset Management and more… appeared first on The TRADE.

James Hilton has been appointed multi-asset managing director in RBC’s low touch team, according to sources familiar with the matter. He joins from Credit Suisse where he had been serving as head of sales for EMEA for the bank’s advanced execution sales (AES) team.

Prior to joining Credit Suisse in 2006, Hilton spent six years at UBS Investment Bank as a director.

Also appointed to the low touch sales and trading team at RBC is Suzanne Webster, who has joined as a multi-asset director, sources have confirmed.

Webster also joins from Credit Suisse where she had previously spent 18 years, first as a pan European equity cash trader and later in a sales and trading role also within the AES division.

The pair join the low touch team at RBC a few months after the departure of co-head of European electronic sales and trading, Bianca Gould, who left the bank in July after almost three years as part of streamlining measures.

Read more – UBS agrees landmark takeover of Credit Suisse after intervention from Swiss authorities

The UBS takeover of Credit Suisse, agreed in March under the Swiss government’s stewardship, has sparked significant turnover on the sell-side in both senior and junior roles.

BNP Paribas bolstered its equities team in London with the hire of Credit Suisse’s event driven team in May, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Susan Stryker Marinello, event driven specialist sales for the EMEA region at the Swiss bank, and Andy Martin and Simon Scott, both risk arbitrage traders, are joining the French lender, according to the people who spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter is private.

More recently, The TRADE reported last week that UBS had cut a number of positions in its cash equities business in London following the take-over, according to people familiar with the matter.

The TRADE contacted RBC for comment. 

The post Credit Suisse duo join RBC in electronic multi-asset team appeared first on The TRADE.

Tourmaline Partners hired three new seasoned financial markets executives as managing directors to help strengthen its global trading capabilities. With the additions of Simon Bradley, James Williams and James Kirk the firm is set to continue its expansion across Europe. Bradley will be responsible for building out Tourmaline’s equity derivatives franchise across Europe, while Williams will be responsible for covering clients on global cash equities execution, building on his two decades of experience in the area. Elsewhere, Kirk is set to oversee and enhance Tourmaline’s services in support of asset managers globally as part of his new role.

BlueCrest Capital Management’s new company, FX trading technology platform BlueX, has appointed Graham MacGregor as chief executive officer. MacGregor joins from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), where he most recently served as chief executive of FX transactions. Elsewhere in his career, MacGregor was EMEA head of sales and relationship management and chief executive, FX MTF business at Refinitiv. Set to launch in the next few months, Blue X utilises BlueCrest developed technology and systems to offer a platform that is ‘inspired by traders, for traders’.

Kepler Cheuvreux Execution Services (KCx) appointed Seb Klatt as program trading (PT) sales trader. London-based Klatt is set to join from Jefferies on 1 October, having most recently served as senior vice president for 12 and a half years, working across PT and low touch.  Prior to this, he worked in an execution sales and account management role at Société Générale, and before that was VP of sales trading at Merril Lynch. 

Frédéric Benizri left TP ICAP to join financing, investment and risk management business CIC Market Solutions as a sales trader. His most recent role at the inter-dealer broker was as a cross asset sales trader, having spent seven years with the business. Benizri also previously worked in convertible bonds and equity derivatives flow sales at Citi for three and a half years, at the time based out of London. Prior to that, Paris-based Benizri worked for UBS, in a structured products sales role.

Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) expanded its footprint across Asia with the opening of its new Singapore office, with the addition of new key appointments. Gerald Koh was appointed head of wholesale Asia (ex-Japan), a role he has held since 1 August. Elsewhere, Heston Goh joined the firm as sales director, South East Asia institutions, on 1 September.

The post People Moves Monday: RBC, Tourmaline Partners, BlueX and more… appeared first on The TRADE.

Chalkley brings more than three decades worth of financial services to the role, in both portfolio management and rates sales.

Before joining RBC, Chalkley spent 11 years at NatWest Markets. He most recently served as managing director in its institutional rates sales business, overseeing key strategic relationships and distributing global rates products.  

Prior to NatWest Markets, Chalkley held similar positions at Nomura, Citi and Morgan Stanley.

Elsewhere in his career, Chalkley served as a European government bond, inflation and absolute return fund manager at BlackRock. 

“Working closely with global trading, strategy and sales partners, Guy will be a key driver in shaping and executing RBC’s ambition to grow relevance and market share with its UK real money and European flow rates client base, collaborating closely with colleagues in the region to critically deepen and expand relationships with existing and prospective clients,” said RBC in a note seen by The TRADE announcing Chalkley’s appointment.

The move follows the addition of Giles Gleave and Mike Heraty who were appointed as managing directors at RBC Capital Markets in July.

Heraty took on the role of head of US equity solutions and structured product sales, while Gleave was appointed head of European equity solutions.

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RBC’s co-head of European electronic sales and trading, Bianca Gould, is set to leave the bank after almost three years, as part of streamlining measures. According to sources familiar with the matter, it has been communicated to clients that due to streamlining, certain roles have been eliminated. Gould’s next role is not yet confirmed. Gould joined RBC Capital Markets in October 2020 to co-lead its European low touch sales and trading business alongside Chris Parker, who has been in the role since 2011. She has extensive experience in the algorithmic and electronic sales and trading space, after previously spending 16 years at Redburn where she held various roles within the European equities sales trading team, most recently as head of algorithmic trading.

James Kirk joined independent outsourced trading services provider Tourmaline Partners as managing director. Earlier this month he announced his departure from Liquidnet where he most recently served as co-head of trading for EMEA for two years, having originally joined the business in 2015. Previously, Kirk served as an equity trader at brokerage firm BTIG and has also held senior positions at ConvergEx Group as vice president, and RBS as European head of agency portfolio trading.

CME Group’s fixed income platform BrokerTec appointed Sara Carter as an executive director and global head of repo. Carter joined BrokerTec from Morgan Stanley, where she most recently served as executive director for client financing sales. Elsewhere in her 15-year tenure at Morgan Stanley, Carter held various senior fixed income sales and trading positions, including serving as vice president of fixed income rates sales.  

The post People Moves Monday: Your weekly update appeared first on The TRADE.

According to sources familiar with the matter, it has been communicated to clients that due to streamlining, certain roles have been eliminated. Gould’s next role is not yet confirmed.

RBC confirmed her departure but declined to comment further.

Gould joined RBC Capital Markets in October 2020 to co-lead its European low touch sales and trading business alongside Chris Parker who has been in the role since 2011.

She has extensive experience in the algorithmic and electronic sales and trading space, after previously spending 16 years at Redburn where she held various roles within the European equities sales trading team, most recently as head of algorithmic trading.

She was made partner at the firm in 2009 and remained the youngest partner appointed to date until the removal of the programme after her departure.

During her tenure at RBC, Gould was responsible for growing its client base and market share, as well as developing client relationships and working with electronic product innovation teams for equities in Europe. 

RBC launched its second algorithm on Aiden, its proprietary AI-based electronic trading platform, in the US in November last year. The algo, Aiden Arrival, builds on the success of the platform’s first solution, a volume-weighted average price (VWAP) algorithm aiming to reduce price slippage and offer an expanded action set to improve clients’ trading performance.

The electronic trading platform, first launched in October 2020 , uses deep reinforcement learning processes to adapt to changing market environments and improve trading results based on live market data.

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