Perps, DTE Options, the 10/10 Meltdown, and the crypto’s shift toward TradFi.
On The Vol Show, Peter Chen, founder and CIO of Riverside Blockchain, comes back to further discuss perpetual futures as Cboe global markets launched continuous futures after he explained that is the crypto community preferences. Chen also looks at where ETFs could be pulling investors off-chain, and he unpacks the 10/10 crypto crash he had warned us could happen, where a a geopolitical shock and pon chain platforms failures triggered a record $19 billion liquidation cascade. Finally, Chen raises alarm bells about risks around digital asset treasury companies and how he believes they amplify boom-bust cycles. However, their predictable flows can create strong trading opportunities.
After months of stonewalling against allegations by French prop trading firm Mosaic Finance, Eurex will shift from Ethernet frame limits to packet limits monitoring in its co-location network from April 2026. Markets participants tell us the change shuts down the ultra-low latency technique Mosaic Finance has labelled Corrupted Speculative Triggering (CST).
Ever since the outbreak of the controversy, Eurex has denied that CST exists but says Advanced Speculative Triggering is allowed. The two appellations stem from Mosaic work who changed the label of the practice from AST to CST in its dispute with Eurex.
Eurex has told clients via a circular authorised by Jonas Ullman, its COO, it will upgrade its co-location 2.0 monitoring infrastructure to Arista’s extensible operating system and a new MetaWatch release. At the same time, it modifies its general terms and conditions and replaces the current Ethernet frame limit with an Ethernet packet limit per order-entry line from 20 April 2026. The hard thresholds, 30,000 messages per second and 600,000 per minute per line, remain unchanged. They will now apply explicitly to all packets detected at the physical layer, including custom Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS) patterns. Sending traffic “in any manner” designed to bypass those limits is therefore explicitly prohibited.
In earlier complaints to the AMF, the Hessen exchange supervisor and ESMA, Mosaic’s president Hugues Morin described CST as a way for some high-frequency trading firms to pre-stream millions of malformed Ethernet packets over multiple order-entry connections. Mosaic alleges these packets, do not conform to Ethernet standards, and are allegedly invisible to the Arista 7130 MetaWatch counters that enforced Eurex’s frame cap, allowing CST users to exceed the 30,000-frame limit by several orders of magnitude while having to rent several multiple order entry lines to Eurex matching engine. In a document, published earlier this year Mosaic offered a way for Eurex to monitor and count these malformed packets with their current Arista setup.
Mosaic has said that when a genuine market-data packet finally arrived, CST / AST engines (FPGA or integrated circuits) could reuse the pre-sent preamble and start-of-frame delimiter as the first part of an order message, giving their orders a timestamp a few nanoseconds before the market-data event they were reacting to. At the speed of light, these racing orders start 1 to 2 meters in front of regular speculatively triggered orders. Mosaic’s lab tests seen by Global Trading suggested a gain of up to 6.4 nanoseconds and a fourfold increase in “hit ratio”, the probability of being first into the matching engine. Mosaic has said this advantage could have cost market participants up to €100 million of P&L.
Mosaic argued that CST / AST breached both the quantitative limits and the qualitative requirements of Eurex’s network access guide. It required participants to “use network protocols in an orderly fashion” and not to send corrupted Ethernet frames such as shortened or padded packets. Mosaïc supplied regulators with a MetaWatch configuration it said would allow Eurex to count corrupted packets and an expert opinion from the University of New Hampshire Inter operability Laboratory confirming that CST packets were not Ethernet-compliant.
Eurex, by contrast, had maintained in correspondence and court proceedings that the practice, which it described as Advanced Speculative Triggering (AST), was compliant as long as its existing monitoring did not trigger an alarm, and that AST packets did not reach the trading system but were discarded by switches. A case brought by Mosaic before the administrative court in Wiesbaden was rejected on procedural grounds, without a ruling on the substance of the allegations.
Sources told us that whether this circular amounts to an effective ban of the practice will be easily verifiable in the nanosecond reaction data observable once the changes take place on 20 April 2026.
A Eurex Spokesman told Global trading: “The circular does not introduce a prohibition to Advanced Speculative Triggering (AST – not CST). It reflects our regular, continuous improvement of our monitoring infrastructure and clarifies how existing technology-related limits are enforced. Specifically, Eurex is extending the current Ethernet Frame Limit to an Ethernet Packet Limit, so that more network patterns are explicitly in scope of the same per second and per minute thresholds. ”
Mosaïc Finance declined to comment for this article.
Joe Aldred has been promoted to head of dealing at Stonehage Fleming. He is based in London.
Earlier this year, Stonehage Fleming was acquired by US wealth advisor Corient. The film holds more than US$175 billion in combined assets.
Aldred’s appointment follows the departure of head of trading and dealing Dan Madsen last month. Madsen had been with the company for almost 20 years, 15 of which were spent in the senior role. He initially joined the company as a fund administrator, becoming an assistant fund manager in 2008.
On his departure, Madsen commented, “It’s never easy when your circumstances change unexpectedly, but after approaching 20 happy years at Stonehage Fleming, it’s time to announce that I am looking for a new challenge and chapter in my career.”
The company declined to comment on its trading function.
Aldred has been a multi-asset dealer at Stonehage Fleming since 2019, before which he held the same role at Arbuthnot Latham & Co.
His career began at accounting and advisory firm Smith & Williamson in 2011, where he became a unit trust dealer in 2015.
European trade bodies are split in their reactions to the European Commission’s proposals on capital market integration, with the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) and the Federation of European Securities Exchanges (FESE) taking different views on changes to the consolidated tape model.
The Commission’s proposal advocates for the inclusion of five layers of best bid and offer on the pre-trade tape and venue attribution for each quote within the equity consolidated tape.
EFAMA states that these changes will provide more useful data to users and encourage initial take-up, following recommendations it made earlier this year.
However, FESE argued that the adjustments were premature.
“[This] could create arbitrage in trading dynamics, which in turn could lead to adverse effects such as further liquidity fragmentation and deterioration in the price discovery process, without providing any major benefits for capital formation,” it stated.
The federation also drew attention to the inclusion of systematic internalisers in the pre-trade tape, noting that this would increase visibility.
The groups’ opinions also diverged on the increased regulatory remit of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).
If adopted, the Commission’s proposals would see ESMA take on direct oversight of trading venues significant to the EU economy.
“[We] stand with the Commission’s bold ambition to tackle fragmented supervisory outcomes under the single rulebook. The new framework should be clear and agile, leveraging local expertise while ensuring harmonised practices across the EU and avoiding costly, overlapping layers of supervision,” FESE proclaimed in its reaction to the package.
Within its proposals, the Commission suggests that the regulator conduct annual reviews of large asset managers.
“We are deeply concerned that these reviews will allow ESMA to second-guess the decisions of national supervisors. This would introduce legal uncertainty for these asset managers under review, as ESMA could challenge supervisory decisions made by national authorities. Considering that asset managers are well-regulated and there have been no significant supervisory failures, the objective or added benefit of these reviews is unclear,” EFAMA stated in its response.
However, the association commended the proposed introduction of a single EU supervisory data space, and the streamlining of cross-border fund operations.
JP Jenkins is launching a wholesale Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System (PISCES) solution, less than a month after its initial approval as a PISCES operator.
The partnership aims to give early-level, high-growth companies access to a wider investor base and trade on a secondary market. JP Jenkins has partnered with Sapphire Capital Partners on the launch, with the investment management firm’s portfolio companies able to access the structure.
Sapphire Capital Partners last reported its assets under management at more than £300 million.
Last month, the Financial Conduct Authority announced JP Jenkins as its second approved PISCES operator.
No trades have yet been reported on a PISCES platform, despite the FCA expecting shares to begin trading before the end of the year.
Technology for the new market will be integrated into the firm’s existing ecosystem, it has stated, with all approved brokers and institutions able to connect directly to its order books.
Sapphire Capital’s founder and chairman Boyd Carson commented, “We realised that the launch of the new PISCES operator licenses would present us with a unique opportunity. [The partnership will] provide new liquidity options and exit opportunities for investors in private companies.”
Elsewhere in the PISCES landscape, financial solutions vendor Apex Group has launched a suite of services and become a Registered Auction Agent (RAA) for the London Stock Exchange’s offering.
The firm will offer support to companies pre-PISCES trading events to ensure they meet compliance and transparency requirements, and will then manage the trading process during that secondary share sale.
Earlier this year, the LSE partnered with ION to use its Fidessa platform for auction events.
PISCES’ regulatory framework is operating in a sandbox environment until 2030, when HM Treasury will provide feedback to Parliament on the initiative. A decision will then be made as to whether it will become part of permanent legislation.
Jeremy Bruce, EMEA head of trading, Bernstein; Frank Mohr, global head of ETF sales trading, Societe Generale
As activity in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) continues to build, Bernstein, the collaborative equity research and brokerage venture of Societe Generale and AllianceBernstein, has launched an execution algorithm for the product.
The algorithm seeks to bring ETF trading back onto exchanges. Currently, spreads are wide, and a lot of institutional clients use request-for-quote (RFQ) instead. Traders are wary of going passive, and never being met, or being aggressive and overpaying, Bernstein’s EMEA head of trading Jeremy Bruce explains to Global Trading.
“Our algo provides the accurate fair value, so you can choose to rest closer to that point. The bid/offer is not the driving factor,” he says. “It massively brings in the spread, so we can create liquidity on the exchange at the right price.”
In November, research and consultancy firm ETFGI reported that European ETF assets had reached a US$3.11 trillion high as of 31 October. The sector has seen net inflows for 37 consecutive months, and year-to-date, net inflows were the highest on record – US$333.22 billion.
Bernstein is not the first to offer an ETF algo. HSBC provides a Fair Value execution algorithm (ETFFV), and speakers at TradeTech earlier this year emphasised the value of such products.
Where this product stands out, Bernstein argues, is in its direct link to Societe Generale’s data.
SocGen is a market maker in around 80% of ETF products across Europe, Bruce says, which gives them a specialised angle on this venture.
Frank Mohr, global head of ETF sales trading at Societe Generale, explains: “As a market maker, we quote these prices on exchange continuously. We know exactly what the fair price is because we get all the information from the issuers. We pass that information over to the Bernstein team, and they have the technology to put that into an algo.”
Also built into the algorithm is the ability to factor in premiums and discounts.
“It might know that, for various reasons, a certain ETF historically trades at 1% above or 2% below the price, for example. It takes that into account,” Bruce notes.
Mohr explains how trading in the market has evolved.
“In the beginning, ETFs were much more often an OTC business. That’s still a big chunk of the market, and as a market maker we are active on those RFQ platforms, where we show prices to institutional clients. The RFQ model is great in many ways, but it’s not always right. The algo is another way to fulfill the execution.”
“Algos have been used in the equity space for a long time, but more information is needed around an ETF for an algo to be built around it,” he adds.
Demand for more on-exchange ETF trading is coming from all angles. Mohr continues.
“Both clients and issuers want to see more products quoted and traded on exchange – that’s like a shop window for them; it attracts more clients. Bringing ETFs back on exchange because it makes the products more attractive and shows the liquidity.”
Susquehanna (SIG) edged ahead of Hudson River Trading (HRT), as the six main market makers delivered US$570 million of price improvement versus total market improvement of US$956 million.
Median E/Q Spread Ratio Over Time
In October, Susquehanna benefited from its specialisation in lower-priced speculative retail names while on a notional weighted basis Citadel Securities – the largest retail market maker – regained its best execution status with a median E/Q at 0.445.
Global Trading’s Rule 605 dataset, analyzed concurrently to the trades on the lit continuous market on 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$570.0 million of price improvement to US retail investors in October on 98.1 billion securities traded. On our “All trades” lit-market proxy (all SIP-reported continuous trades with a live, unlocked NBBO), October volumes reached 170.8 billion shares, generating US$956.5 million of price improvement versus the NBBO.
On a per-share basis, this corresponds to around 0.58 cent of price improvement per share for the market makers versus about 0.56 cent for the lit-market proxy, confirming that retail internalisers continued to provide better economics than the average lit execution, even as the gap narrowed. In September, market makers delivered 0.55 cent per share against about 0.49 cent for the lit proxy. October’s figures therefore represent an increase of around 29% in wholesaler share volume and 35% in aggregate wholesaler price improvement versus September, while the lit proxy saw volumes rise by about 27% and aggregate price improvement climb by 45%. On a per-share basis, price improvement rose by about 6% for market makers and more than 14% for the lit market.
Measured by Global Trading’s 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 – Susquehanna moved into a clear first place on October’s share-weighted median. SIG’s median E/Q improved from 0.295 in September to 0.275 in October, with 68.0% of its executed shares landing in the sub-0.40 E/Q region that we classify as “near mid”. HRT remained very close behind, with a median E/Q of around 0.325 and 71.7% of its volume is executed at E/Q below 0.40. For both firms, the bulk of trading still occurs close to mid-price, well ahead of both the other market makers and the lit-market proxy, whose median E/Q remained around 1.005 with just under 21% of volume in the sub-0.40 bucket.
Across the rest of the group, Citadel Securities’ share-weighted median E/Q moved from 0.48 in September to 0.525 in October, but its share of near-mid executions remained broadly stable at around 35.6% of volume. Virtu’s median E/Q ticked up from 0.53 to 0.535, while its proportion of volume with E/Q under 0.40 declined more noticeably, from the mid-20s to 18.2%. Jane Street and Two Sigma both saw their median E/Qs improve: Jane Street moved from 0.56 in September to 0.505 in October, and Two Sigma from around 0.46 to 0.435. Their respective shares of “near-mid” volume remained relatively modest, at around 17% for Jane Street and just under 40% for Two Sigma.
In absolute price-improvement terms, Citadel Securities remained by some distance the largest retail execution venue. It provided retail traders US$196.8 million of price improvement on 37.6 billion securities traded in October, up from US$137.3 million on 28.9 billion securities in September. That equates to increases of 30% in share volume and more than 43% in delivered price improvement month on month, lifting Citadel’s per-share price improvement from 0.48 cent to 0.52 cent.
Virtu is still the second largest wholesaler by volume, with October price improvement of US$103.9 million on 19.9 billion securities traded, compared with US$85.9 million on 16.8 billion securities in September. Its aggregate price improvement rose by just over 20% month on month and its volume by a similar amount, leaving its per-share price improvement broadly stable, at 0.52 cent in October versus 0.51 cent in September.
Susquehanna and Hudson River Trading continued to lead on execution quality, while also growing volumes strongly. Susquehanna delivered around US$88.8 million of price improvement in October on 11.4 billion shares, up from US$73.4 million on 10.1 billion shares in September. Its per-share price improvement increased from 0.73 cent to 0.78 cent, the highest figure in the six-firm universe. HRT provided US$97.4 million of price improvement on 15.0 billion shares, versus US$73.6 million on 11.0 billion shares in September – a rise of more than 36% in share volume and 32% in price improvement. On a per-share basis, HRT’s price improvement eased slightly from 0.67 cent to 0.65 cent, but it remained one of the top two performers when combining price improvement and E/Q metrics.
As explained in our previous coverage, these share weighted execution quality beating results are a result of the mix of securities traded and order types. In October Susquehanna had particular success filling orders in BigBear.ai Holdings and Ford. Also HRT top 5 traded shares was very similar we assume the gap would have been created in similar retail driven smaller dollar value stocks.
Jane Street and Two Sigma again rounded out the group, but both saw significant gains in activity and price improvement. Jane Street in particular delivered around US$57.6 million of price improvement on 9.9 billion shares, up from US$36.8 million on 7.0 billion shares in September. That equates to an increase of more than 40% in share volume and over 55% in price improvement, lifting per-share price improvement from 0.53 cent to 0.58 cent and bringing its median E/Q closer to the middle of the pack. Two Sigma’s totals rose from US$15.4 million on 2.6 billion shares in September to US$25.4 million on 4.3 billion shares in October, with both volume and price improvement growing by around 65%. Its per-share price improvement remained just under 0.60 cent and its median E/Q improved to 0.435, with close to 40% of its flow in the “near-mid” region.
The order-type breakdown for October confirms further that market makers’ specialisation by flow type and typical ticket size remains largely intact. Susquehanna and HRT continue to be the most market-order-heavy firms in the sample. For SIG, around 78% of October retail tickets and 77% of executed shares were market orders, with a further 17% of orders and 21% of volume coming from marketable limit orders. HRT had 61% of orders and 70% of executed shares as market orders, plus 13% of orders and 18% of shares as marketable limits. This mix, heavily skewed towards immediate, liquidity-taking instructions, remains closely aligned with their very low median E/Qs and high shares of near-mid executions.
Citadel Securities and Virtu again showed more balanced configurations. For Citadel, 30% of tickets were market orders and 34% were marketable limit orders in October; yet in share-weighted terms, market orders generated around 55% of executed volume and marketable limit orders 33%. Virtu’s ticket mix was dominated by marketable limit orders, which represented just over 43% of orders compared with 31% for market orders, but market orders still accounted for 58% of executed shares. In both cases, a modest but meaningful proportion of orders and shares were filled via inside-NBBO or at-the-quote limit orders, contributing additional price improvement and reflecting routing choices by retail brokers.
Jane Street and Two Sigma’s order-type profiles remain the most differentiated from the group. Jane Street still has the highest proportion of inside-NBBO limit activity, with inside-quote limits representing close to 30% of tickets and 9% of executed shares, while marketable limits and market orders split the rest of its volume at 40% and 48% respectively. Two Sigma’s executed volume in October was again more heavily concentrated in market orders, at around two-thirds of shares, but its ticket mix remained skewed towards marketable limits, which represented close to 45% of all orders.
October’s data also reinforce the size specialisation observed in earlier months. Taking total executed shares divided by the number of orders as a proxy, SIG and HRT once more handled the largest average retail tickets in the group, at 1,090 and 975 shares per order respectively. Citadel Securities and Virtu sat in the middle of the distribution, with average order sizes of 566 and 511 shares, while Jane Street and Two Sigma remained at the smaller-ticket end, with average executed order sizes of 307 and 365 shares.
On the E/Q chart, the October dataset also shows a clear divergence between the median E/Q when share-weighted, which is derived directly from the raw Rule 605 disclosures, and the notional-weighted view, where we apply a monthly VWAP to each security traded by the market makers. When notional-weighted, the execution-quality advantage of HRT and Susquehanna over Citadel Securities disappears entirely: Citadel’s notional-weighted median E/Q is 0.45, compared with 0.48 for SIG and 0.50 for HRT.
The two largest notional traded stocks for HRT, SIG and Citadel Securities were TSLA and NVDA. In Tesla they traded approximately and respectively US45bn, $37bn and $103bn but Citadel execution was much better at an E/Q of 0.499, versus 0.62 for Susquehanna and 0.60 for HRT. This was also the case in Nvidia.
*
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.
Rafael Moral Santiago, head of securities services and executive board member, SIX
SIX is integrating its SIX x-clear and BME Clearing platforms into a single multi-asset central counterparty (CCP) clearing house: Six Clearing.
Currently, both platforms are operated independently, with BME Clearing covering multi asset and SIX x-clear specialising in pan-European cash equities.
BME Clearing’s existing EU licence will allow SIX Clearing to access European Central Bank EUR liquidity, T2 and TS2, and European regulated markets and multilateral trading facilities.
BME was acquired by SIX in 2020.
Rafael Moral Santiago, head of securities services and executive board member at SIX, commented, “As a consolidated CCP, SIX will be able to diversify into other asset classes and expand the reach of our offering.
“With the EU license, we are in a position to become the leading provider of integrated and digital post-trade solutions for the European market and compete internationally with a unique value proposition.”
Earlier this year SIX became a preferred CCP for Euronext’s markets, competing directly with the exchange group’s in-house service – and Cboe Clear.
As of September, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) had authorised 14 CCPs across Europe. The most active of these include LCH, Eurex Clearing and Euronext Clearing.
Traction is growing for the long-awaited European Savings and Investments Union (SIU), with the European Commission adopting a package to integrate the region’s markets. With intentions to increase the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) supervisory remit, cut down cross-border processes and encourage the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT), the monster proposals have been described by ESMA as “ambitious”.
Much of the proposals centre around reducing “persistent fragmentation” across European trading and post-trading infrastructure and supervision.
Presenting the package during a press conference, European Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque said, “With every proposal I have stood here and stressed the political urgency driving our strategy, choosing not to act, sticking with the status quo, choosing to tolerate the barriers and fragmentation we know so well leads only one way to a Europe that invests too little, grows too slowly, and loses ground geopolitically and economically. That is not a path that the Europeans or Europe can afford.”
In the Commission’s explanations of the proposal, it added, “This fragmentation prevents financial entities from taking advantage of the treaty freedoms that should be inherent to the single market, causing them to miss out on potential economies of scale and efficiency gains. This results in higher costs being passed on to users of financial services.”
One element of the new package includes improvements to passporting opportunities across regulated markets and central securities depositories, with trading venues able to hold a ‘Pan-European Market Operator’ status. This will help with Europe’s ongoing fragmentation issues, remove barriers to cross-border trading and streamline cross-border distribution of investment funds, the Commission said. Operations would be conducted under a single licence and through a single entity.
If the proposals are approved, the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) direct oversight of trading venues significant to the EU economy, which the Commission expects to be a collection of nine trading groups. This will simplify procedures, improve supervision consistency and cut down on paperwork, the Commission states.
In its response to the proposal, ESMA affirmed, “ESMA stands ready to take on these specific responsibilities, drawing on almost 15 years of growing experience supervising diverse and selective parts of our capital markets. ESMA would work hand in hand with the National Competent Authorities (NCAs) to develop the capacity and expertise to take on such new responsibilities.”
“We will have to increase the funding for ESMA. We will also increase the proportion of fee-based activities, so there will be more contribution from market participants,” Albuquerque said during a press conference.
Calculations in the proposal expect ESMA’s budget to increase by between €100 million and €110 million, with 10% contributed by the EU budget, 5% from NCA contributions, and the remained made up of extra fees from newly supervised entities.
A total of 480 new staff will also be onboarded to the regulator.
“By removing barriers in trading, post-trading and asset management, and by enabling more harmonised supervision, the package will help market participants operate more seamlessly across the single market and support scale, efficiency and better outcomes for investors and businesses,” ESMA added.
European Principal Traders Association (EPTA) secretary general Piebe Teeboom agreed that removing trading barriers is important, but warned that a cut-back in market choice would be a mistake.
“That would be rolling back 20 years of progress since MiFID I. The right way to reduce market fragmentation is to address operational fragmentation and gold plating in EU post trade markets. Instead, we need full harmonisation of rules and operational procedures as well as safeguards for true competition. This requires full interoperability of systems.”
On ESMA’s expanding remit, be added, “The need to improve supervision must not get lost in a fight over which agency does the supervising. A single supervisor makes sense for some pan-European infrastructures, but most important is full convergence and consistency in supervision of all EU firms and market activities.”
The proposals also include amendments to the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR), increasing interoperability and introducing a ‘hub and spoke’ model. With this approach, CSDs operating across member states and processing high levels of settlement instructions would connect to one another, while smaller CSDs would have to connect to at least one larger ‘hub’ as a ‘spoke’. Reducing fragmentation in this space would cut down costs, increase access to financial instruments, the Commission argues.
ESMA would also hold direct supervisory authority over significant CSDs, introducing structured supervisory fees and procedures and clear pricing and fee disclosures.
Alongside these supervisory changes, the Commission has also proposed relaxing limits on distributed ledger technology (DLT) to push for innovation and adaptability around new technology.
Proposals will be negotiated and approved by the European Parliament and European Council, and combined into a cohesive set of reforms, before they are implemented.
“Maintaining the unity of the package is crucial,” the European Commission affirmed. “The Commission is dedicated to collaborating closely with the European Parliament, Member States, and other stakeholders to ensure the swift and effective implementation of these measures.”
While ESMA called the Commission’s proposal “ambitious”, Teeboom opined, “The greatest risk to the SIU is that policy makers set their ambitions too low to actually achieve the reforms needed to make Europe a globally competitive economy supported by a strong capital market.”
Optiver is building out its institutional sales team, with Oliver Chapman and Ian Schneider joining the cash equity sales team in London and Piette Antoine Jaunâtre taking on ETF sales in Amsterdam.
The trio report to Jean-Marie Tine, head of delta-one institutional sales.
In 2024, Optiver reported net trading income of €3.494 billion, up 26% year-on-year (YoY), and overall profits of €1.369 billion, up 18% YoY..
Tine commented, “These hires bring deep experience and strong relationships to a team already leading in its field. They represent the next stage of our growth — expanding liquidity provision in European equities to US counterparties, strengthening our UK presence, and building our direct ETF trading capabilities.”
Earlier this year, the former head of engineering for BlackRock’s Aladdin joined the trading company.
Chapman and Schneider join the company from Barclays and Morgan Stanley respectively. Chapman’s more than 15 year career has been spent at the firm, initially at Barclays Capital before moving into electronic cash equities sales at the investment bank.
Schneider’s 14-year tenure at Morgan Stanley most recently saw him as an executive director of cash equity sales trading. At Optiver, he will be focussed on relationships with US counterparties.
Jaunâtre has been an institutional ETF trader at Flow Traders since 2014, before which he was on the equity derivatives sales team for Spain and France at Societe Generale CIB. In his new role, he is responsible for ETF sales across France and Iberia.
