As of 31 October, the Macquarie businesses’ assets under management are valued at approximately US$166 billion.
Nomura will distribute certain Macquarie private funds to high net worth US clients and family offices. The two companies have partnered on product distribution and investment strategy development in tandem with the acquisition.
Following the deal’s closure, the Macquarie businesses will be combined with Nomura Capital Management (NCM), and its high yield business, Nomura Corporate Research and Asset Management (NCRAM), to form a Nomura Asset Management International.
This entity will be led by Shawn Lytle, previously head of Americas for Macquarie Group, as CEO. Robert Stark, CEO of Nomura Capital Management, will additionally take on the roles of president and deputy CEO for the new division.
The acquisition does not impact Nomura Asset Management’s existing US assets. The firm’s most senior buyside trader in the US, John Pickard, is head of equities and multi-asset at NAM International. He manages the performance and governance of teams and is responsible for the firm’s centralised investment platform.
Mai Tanaka is global head of trading for the asset management business.
Citi’s APAC growth has been given another boost with the appointment of Yuko Nakayama as head of equity capital markets (ECM) for Japan investment banking.
Nakayama is responsible for the growth of Citi’s ECM presence. She reports directly to Taiji Nagasaka and Akira Kiyota and has matrix reporting lines to Harish Raman and Kenneth Chow.
Citi made a number of APAC equity appointments at the start of the year, including Kiyota.
In Europe, senior appointments include Jason Woods as EMEA head of futures execution and Jamie Miller and Abdul Satti as co-heads of electronic execution for the region.
Nakayama began working at Citi in 2009, spending six years with the company as an ECM banker before moving to Goldman Sachs, where most recently she was ECM vice president. She rejoined Citi an ECM director in 2023.
Stuart Heath, Eurex equity and index product development, Eurex
Quantitative investment strategy (QIS) index futures can now be traded on Eurex.
Three index futures are initially available, based on strategies by Société Générale and Solactive. Data on the indices and their components is provided by Eurex’s data partner Premialab.
Stuart Heath, product research and development for equity and index at Eurex, told Global Trading, “This is a listed future, something that we know and love at Eurex. It fits into our systems, from front to back. It’s very much like any other index futures at Eurex, but it has a combination of familiarity, standardisation and a customisable nature.
“Market participants told us about the growth of bespoke index products that they’re distributing to their clients. Essentially, we’re offering an access product. The alternative for the buy side might have been using an OTC swap or a structured note, for example, to gain returns.”
Many sell-side firms already run QIS within their operations – RBC Capital Markets, Barclays and JP Morgan, to name three – and vendors like RavenPack provide them to clients. Large buy-side firms, especially pension funds, are also QIS heavyweights.
Eurex intends to expand its offering based on client demand and market evolution, with potential growth areas noted as long-short strategies, volatility-targeted indices, and derivative overlays.
Heath added, “QIS can sound difficult, but there are many forms of it. We’re not at the very complex stage yet, we’re starting with simpler strategies, which should be familiar to market participants. We could get more complex, but we need to make sure we tick all the right boxes – from regulation to risk management.”
A few years ago, Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) investing was all the rage. Now, investors seem to have evolving views. European managers are rethinking sectorial exclusion policies as they have been particularly affected by underexposure to defence stocks, causing significant underperformance versus their non-ESG counterparts.
End investors have adopted the European case for defence stocks faster than ESG funds have changed their allocations. Case in point Rheinmetall, the largest German and fifth-largest European arms manufacturer, was up 138% versus 12% for the Bloomberg 500 European index as of end of November 2025. According to BMLL data, retail trading totalled €71m in November 2024 on European venues but activity ramped up 7 folds to €500m in November 2025.
But the newly found investment realpolitik is gaining ground. It was reflected in an introductory speech at FIX Paris by Laurent Clavel, head of cross-asset at AXA IM. He said investors are becoming more nuanced:
“On defence, if clients have their own convictions and want to invest in the sector, they are not wondering whether defence is ESG. But sustainability and sovereignty should not be seen as opposing forces, and our ESG policies do not exclude the defence sector per se. Our responsible investment policy excludes investments in controversial weapons.”
As of end-August, Morningstar data shows ESG strategies — from large-cap blend equity to diversified bond funds — lagging their non-ESG peers. The sharpest gap is in Europe, where ESG large-cap European equity funds are trailing conventional funds by 3 percentage points, reflecting a persistent underweight in defence. Funds were also and still underweight fossile fuel related energy stocks, which had also caused marked underperformance in 2022. Against that backdrop, global sustainable funds have seen US$57.3 billion in net outflows so far this year, with redemptions accelerating in the third quarter.
These large ESG redemption numbers are to be looked at critically as most of the flows stem from a large Blackrock client moving to custom made ESG labels.
At the same time, exclusion policies are being materially reworked. Research by Hortense Bioy, head of sustainable investing research at Morningstar, finds that while around 92% of Article 8 funds — also known as “light-green funds”, which incorporate some ESG principles but do not have sustainability as their core objective — now state controversial-weapons exclusions in their prospectus, only about 31% apply explicit exclusions to military contracting. In practice, Article 8 funds have more than doubled their effective exposure to controversial weapons and military contracting since 2022, even if involvement remains materially lower than in Article 6 funds.
Bioy said: “Sustainability-oriented investors have had to rethink the role of defence sector companies in their portfolios.” She added: “Some now see financing European defence as part of their social responsibility, alongside concerns about missing out on financial returns.”
For asset managers, and even sovereign funds such as Norges Bank, this is no longer purely an ethical or philosophical debate. Underperformance versus conventional benchmarks, combined with sizeable redemptions and pressure from clients and politicians, is forcing a review of investibility criteria.
In Report No. 22 (2024–2025): The Government Pension Fund 2025, the Norwegian Finance Ministry wrote:
“Exclusions are limited to the gravest forms of ethical norm violations. The threshold for excluding companies from [NBIM] shall be high. The guidelines are forward-looking and concern the risk of ongoing or future unacceptable conditions. Exclusion is not a mechanism based on concluded company actions that lie in the past.”
During a recent review of exclusion policies, Norwegian finance minister Jens Stoltenberg said:
“This review is necessary to safeguard the pension fund and key considerations. We must find a balance between the principles the fund is meant to uphold. The committee has important work ahead.”
Regulators too are changing tack. The new European sustainable finance disclosure regulation (SFDR) has introduced anew ESG category and will lead according to Morningstar to a new wave of fund reclassification. Meanwhile the FCA is launching an ESG consultation on 1 December to better the transparency standings of ESG rating companies.
Risk appetite, debt fears, and AI: Northern Trust AM chief strategist identifies key market signals for 2026
New Trader TV – Northern Trust Asset Management’s Gary Paulin warns that one of the biggest risks to investors this quarter could be underexposure and over bearishness, as buy sides wrap up 2026. The chief investment strategist, International, discusses where he is seeing a disconnect in fearful institutional sentiment and strong market performance. Paulin also examines rising global debt concerns, assesses whether an AI bubble is emerging, and identifies the key market signals investors should be watching.
In this episode:
📌 The biggest risk is “not having enough risk on” says NTAM strategist
📌 Liquidity conditions outlook
📌 How concerned should we be about growing global debt levels?
José Manuel Ortiz, head of clearing and repo operations, SIX
SIX has acquired Nordic clearing system vendor Baymarkets, planning to expand its European post-trade solutions with a derivatives clearing platform.
Equity derivatives in Europe can currently be cleared by a number of central counterparties, including Eurex Clearing, Euronext Clearing and Cboe Clear.
Currently, the exchange group develops its clearing solutions in-house. José Manuel Ortiz, head of clearing and repo operations at SIX, told Global Trading, “The acquisition of Baymarkets will enable SIX to utilise their expertise to support the group in developing a leading pan-European clearing offering.”
Baymarkets supports clearing in both exchange-traded and over-the-counter markets, covering multiple currencies and asset classes. In 2016, the company took over the support, maintenance and development of SIX x-clear’s Clara clearing system. Members of the SIX team managing the system moved to Baymarkets.
Ortiz commented, “[The] legacy Clara system was sunset in 2022, but since then the collaboration has continued supporting other projects. By bringing Baymarkets into the group, SIX can leverage the firm’s deep experience with SIX architecture.”
Singaporean commodities exchange and clearing house Abaxx adopted Baymarkets’ Clara clearing platform in 2024. PwC Switzerland partnered with the company in 2020 for the delivery of global post-trade and clearing solutions.
The financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.
In this episode of Traders Magazine’s Open Order podcast, Global Trading’s Editor, Nick Dunbar spoke to Broadridge’s David Runacres about how booming capital markets in Japan are spurring automation and improving resilience.
Hudson River Trading (HRT) and Susquehanna (SIG) kept improving their share weighted-execution-quality edge in September as US equity volumes and retail price improvement covered by Rule 605 disclosures rebounded to US$422.5 million. Citadel Securities remained dominant in size, trading more than 28.9 billion shares.
Median E/Q Spread Ratio Over Time
Global Trading’s expanded Rule 605 dataset, collated to the Securities Information Processor (SIP) using BMLL Data Lab, shows that the six largest retail market makers – Citadel Securities, Virtu, Susquehanna, Hudson River Trading, Jane Street and Two Sigma Securities – delivered US$422.5 million of price improvement to US retail investors in September on 76.3 billion securities traded. On our “All trades” lit-market proxy (all SIP-reported continuous trades with a live, unlocked NBBO), September volumes reached 134.0 billion shares, generating US$657.4 million of price improvement versus the NBBO.
On a per-share basis, this corresponds to around 0.55 cent of price improvement per share for the market makers versus 0.49 cent for the lit-market proxy, confirming that retail internalisers continue to provide better economics than the average lit execution. In August, when lit continuous trading fell to 123 billion securities traded and aggregate price improvement on the proxy dipped to US$632 million, market conditions were noticeably quieter; the September figures therefore represent an increase of 9% in lit-market volumes and 4% in market-wide price improvement versus August.
Measured by our standard E/Q ratio – the realised spread versus the prevailing NBBO spread, where 0 indicates a trade at the mid-price and 1 a trade at the quote – Hudson River Trading and Susquehanna again posted the lowest share-weighted median E/Q in September, at 0.295 each. Approximately 75.9% of HRT’s September volume and 64.4% of SIG’s volume fell into the sub-0.40 E/Q region, while Citadel Securities’ median E/Q improved to 0.48, with 35.8% of its volume landing in the sub-0.40 bucket. Two Sigma’s median was 0.46, Virtu’s 0.53 and Jane Street’s 0.56, with correspondingly lower near-mid shares of volume.
The September data extend the pattern described in our previous reporting, where SIG and HRT had already emerged as the year’s biggest net improvers in both volume and median E/Q. HRT’s median E/Q has moved from 0.315 in August to about 0.295 in September, while SIG’s has fallen back from 0.335 to the same 0.295 level, leaving both still well clear of the rest of the field on a share-weighted basis.
In absolute price-improvement terms, Citadel Securities remains, as ever, the largest retail execution venue. It provided retail traders US$137.3 million of price improvement on 28.9 billion securities traded, up from US$130.9 million on 25.2 billion securities traded in August – an increase of 15% in volume traded and 5% in delivered price improvement.
Virtu remained the second-largest wholesaler by volume, with September price improvement of US$85.9 million on 16.8 billion securities traded. Its price-improvement total was largely unchanged from US$86.2 million in August, but on slightly larger volume traded.
Susquehanna delivered US$73.4 million of price improvement in September on 10.1 billion shares, up from US$65.4 million in August, while Hudson River Trading provided US$73.6 million on 11.0 billion shares compared with US$57.5 million in August. HRT had the strongest relative month-on-month improvement, with price improvement rising 28%. Jane Street and Two Sigma rounded out the group with US$36.8 million and US$15.4 million of price improvement respectively.
The order-type breakdown for September shows a distinct specialisation by wholesaler, both in terms of the type of flow they interact with and the typical ticket sizes. SIG and HRT remain the most market-order-heavy market makers. For Susquehanna, around 75% of September retail tickets and roughly 77% of executed shares were market orders, with a further 16% of orders and 20% of volume coming from marketable limit orders. HRT had about 59% of orders and 69% of executed shares as market orders, as well as over 18% of volume filled via marketable limit orders. This mix, skewed towards immediate, liquidity-taking instructions, appears correlated with both firms’ very low median E/Q ratios and high shares of executions near mid.
Citadel Securities and Virtu show a more balanced mix. Citadel Securities’ September disclosures show that 29% of the tickets it filled were market orders and 34% were marketable limit orders; yet on a share-weighted basis, market orders generated 55% of its executed volume and marketable limit orders 33%. Virtu’s flow profile is dominated by limit orders in terms of order count, with close to 49% of tickets classified as marketable limits and just over 27% as market orders, but the bulk of executed shares still comes from market orders, which accounted for 60% of its volume. In both cases, a modest but meaningful proportion of orders and shares were filled as inside-NBBO or at-the-quote limit orders, contributing to additional price improvement but also reflecting routing choices by retail brokers.
Jane Street’s and Two Sigma’s order-type profiles are the most differentiated from the group. Jane Street has the highest proportion of inside-NBBO limit activity in September: 28% of its tickets and 9% of its executed shares were inside-quote limit orders, while marketable limits represented 41% of its executed volume and market orders about 47%. Two Sigma’s executed volume was more heavily concentrated in market orders, at around 64%, but its ticket mix was also skewed towards marketable limits, which represented close to 49% of orders.
The September data also provide a clear picture of size specialisation across market makers. Taking total executed shares divided by the number of orders as a proxy, SIG and HRT handled the largest average retail tickets in the group, at roughly 1,040 shares and 940 shares per order respectively. Citadel Securities and Virtu sat in the middle of the distribution, with average order sizes of 510 and 420 shares. Jane Street and Two Sigma are at the smaller-ticket end, with average executed order sizes of 270 and 290 shares respectively.
On the E/Q chart we can also see large divergences between the median E/Q when share-weighted, which is derived from the raw 605 disclosures, and the notional-weighted one, where we apply the monthly VWAP to each security traded by the market makers. When notional-weighted, the execution-quality lead of HRT and Susquehanna is much smaller. This reflects the fact that in terms of notional traded, the top-traded stocks at HRT, SIG, and Citadel Securities are similar, with similar E/Q values in those names. In September, in notional terms, their most-traded stock was TSLA. In that name, Citadel Securities was slightly superior in execution quality with an E/Q of 0.53 versus 0.59 and 0.57 at Susquehanna and HRT respectively.
On the other hand, in terms of shares traded, the top stocks at HRT and Susquehanna are lower-priced ones with E/Q around 0.2, such as Opendoor or SNAP, and these represent a larger share of their overall execution.
*
In all our execution quality reports, we discuss E/Q, the standard measure of wholesalers’ / retail market makers’ execution quality. The measure is calculated as the spread realised by market makers versus the national best bid offer (NBBO) mid-point divided by the prevailing NBBO spread. This means a ‘0’ E/Q is a trade at mid price, 0.5 is a trade at half the spread between mid and NBBO, and ‘1’ is trading at NBBO, while ‘2’ would be trading at twice the spread.
605 disclosures contain these aggregate measures per order type and order size, as well as tickers and volume. For price we use our monthly calculated volume weighted average price (VWAP) per ticker from the ‘all trades’ proxy sourced and constructed on BMML Data Lab.
Our lit market proxy looks at all the securities information processor’s trades within the month, as long as the bid and offer have been updated within 10 seconds of a trade, and the quotes are not locked or crossed.
Markets are mourning Cassandra Seier, who passed away this weekend.
Throughout her almost 30-year career, Seier held numerous senior roles and she spent more than 23 years with Goldman Sachs. During her time at the firm, she was a managing director, overseeing electronic execution, clearing sales and over-the-counter clearing sales functions.
She joined NYSE in 2022 as head of international capital markets.
NYSE commented: “We are devastated by the news that our colleague Cassanda Seier passed away over the weekend. She was integral to our team, and an incredibly strong, vibrant member of our NYSE community. Our thoughts are with her family during this difficult time.”
NYSE Group president Lynn Martin added, via LinkedIn, “[Seier] embodied everything that makes the NYSE team great – a tireless defense of the principles she believed in and a fierce champion of every single customer she touched.
“To know her was to know that she had endless energy – she was someone who was laser focused on getting a job done but always found time to offer anyone support and to mentor the next generation of leaders. To say I admired her would be an understatement – stood in awe might be a better expression.”
Seier was also chairwoman of the World Federation of Exchange’s listings working group and CEO and president of the non-profit organisation, Women in Financial Markets (WIFM).
In a post on LinkedIn, WIFM shared: “Her legacy is woven into every part of our organisation through the programs she championed, the community she nurtured, and the opportunities she created for thousands of women. We all looked up to her. We always will.”
A FIX Trading working group is drafting new protocols to bring ETF primary processes into private networks. ETF creation and redemption are labour-intensive, but as issuers and authorised participants (APs) warn, private-network connection costs need to be considered.
At FIX Paris 2025 on 20 November, the ETF working group presented proposals to improve the stubbornly manual processes associated with ETF primary workflows. The group aims to standardise the creation and redemption of ETFs within the FIX network.
At Vanguard, which manages more than US$5.4 trillion in ETF assets, a spokesperson told Global Trading: “We can confirm we are highly supportive of the initiative. We have done a lot of work in recent years to ensure that around 80% of our create/redeem volume already uses FIX.”
Jim Kaye, executive director at FIX, said: “Authorised participants are telling us that they’re now turning business away because having to manage multiple, manual system integrations and workflows creates significant levels of risk and cost.” He added: “Lack of automation in primary markets is also increasing spreads, particularly during volatile periods, and negatively impacting secondary markets.”
While ETF trading is largely electronic via RFQ and FIX connectivity on the secondary side, primary processes often still rely on issuer-specific portals, emails, and spreadsheets. That forces APs to manage a long list of bilateral connections and workflows for what is a very high-value but ultra-low-frequency activity.
According to one of the issuer present, the typical pattern is one large primary trade per line per day — an activity that remains operationally complex and heavily reliant on human intervention.
Bo Bjurgert, COO of ETPLink, a FIX member also said: ““Everyone uses FIX already, and the protocol can be updated easily and flexibly to solve these problems.”
He added: “Both issuers and APs recognise the need to have the entire chain from creation and redemption to trading and settlement automated via FIX.”
Yuhang Wang, business initiative director at FIX confirmed this, saying: “The feedback is that people would like a global standard, and FIX is seen as a very good tool for communicating the information needed.”
She added: “One AP said that in three to five years, if people don’t have a standard and don’t use FIX, they’re not sure they can keep up with the business.”
FIX is now working on a recommended practices document for ETF workflows. Beyond developing industry-wide standards for creation and redemption, the group also aims to establish a standard for communicating ETF metadata and intrinsic data such as iNAV, as well as to address the settlement complexities linked to fragmented settlement locations and the challenges of T+1 settlement for cross-border ETFs.
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