Akira Kiyota and Taiji Nagasaka, co-heads of investment banking for Japan, Citi
Akira Kiyota and Taiji Nagasaka have been named co-head of investment banking for Japan at Citi, effective 1 October 2025.
The appointments follow an uptick in deal flow in the country, Citi stated, adding that it is seeking to capture more inbound and outbound opportunities.
Japan has seen strong IPO performance over the last year, with US$9 billion issued in JPY between May 2024 and April 2025 putting it in fourth place globally.
Based in Tokyo, the pair will report to Jan Metzger, head of investment banking for Japan, Asia North, Australia and Asia South, and Robert Nakamura, country officer and head of banking for Japan.
They replace Masuo Fukuda, who will continue his role as vice chair of Japan and become vice chair for Japan and Asia North investment banking.
With more than 25 years of experience, Nagasaka has been a managing director, head of investment banking product and head of equity capital markets in Japan since joining Citi in 2022. Prior to this, he was head of equity capital markets at Mizuho and director of equity capital markets at SMBC Nikko Securities.
Kiyota has 30 years of industry experience, more than 20 years of which has been spent at Nomura. Most recently, he was a senior managing director and global head of mergers and acquisitions at the company. Earlier in his career, Kiyota held roles at JP Morgan Securities and Sanwa Bank.
Marlborough: Bond markets zero in on Fed signals and tariff risks.
Bond markets will be closely watching employment data this week says James Athey, senior fixed income portfolio manager, at Marlborough, for any signs of labour weakness, which could push the Federal Reserve towards earlier rate cuts. The PM shares his views on the lead drivers moving markets; the impact of headline volatility on directional flow, and the looming questions over tariff risks.
In this episode, Athey also unpacks where he sees growing investor complacency; the importance of prioritising liquidity in the current trading environment, and where he sees concerns rising over shifts in private markets.
Liquidnet has hired David Ramirez as a senior high-touch and program-trading specialist within its US Equities group.
Ramirez joined 12 May after four and a half years as an executive director on Instinet’s High-Touch desk and previously held senior sales-trading roles at Wolfe Research, FBR, Dahlman Rose, and Susquehanna.
His arrival follows two earlier 2025 Instinet veteran hires: Mark Turner, who became co-head of equities sales & trading for the Americas in February, and Hillary Budds, appointed head of US crossing in April. Together, the trio strengthens Liquidnet’s block-trading, high-touch and program-trading capabilities as the agency broker expands its US equities franchise.
Slawomir Rzeszotko, head of ETF sales and trading, Jane Street
Jane Street has received approval to conduct financial services activities in the UAE.
Jane Street MENA was licensed by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) on 25 June, after documents to incorporate the private company, limited by shares, were submitted on 11 June.
Slawomir Rzeszotko, head of ETF sales and trading at Jane Street, has been registered as director of the company. The firm will be based in Abu Dhabi’s financial district.
Last year, Jane Street took more than 10% of total North American equity market share and currently holds offices in New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore. Its competitor Citadel Securities holds 23% of total market share, a spokesperson told Global Trading.
Diego Arredondo-Armas, trader, Cabrera Capital Markets
Cabrera Capital Markets has appointed Diego Arredondo-Armas as a trader on its LatAm equities trading team as it expands its presence in the region.
The expansion responds to increasing demand for LatAm access, the company said, and anticipates growth across markets in the region. The Chicago-based firm has an established presence in Brazil and Mexico, which it states is a particular area of client interest, and now covers Chilean, Colombian and Peruvian markets.
Arredondo-Armas joins Cabrera from GBM, where he began his career as a junior equity research analyst in 2021. He became an equity and derivatives trader at the firm in 2022.
Martin Cabrera, Cabrera Capital Markets CEO, commented, “Latin America is a region of growing opportunity for our clients. As trade relationships and investor interest deepen across Mexico and beyond, we’re proud to invest in the talent and infrastructure to meet that demand.”
Terence Lam, head of distribution for Asia ex-Japan, Nomura Asset Management
Nomura Asset Management has named Terence Lam as head of distribution for Asia ex-Japan, a newly created role for the business.
Lam is responsible for the company’s fund distribution strategy across the region, overseeing the coverage of institutional and intermediary channels, building out the firm’s client base and developing tailored client solutions.
Based in Singapore, he reports to Kenichi Suzuki, senior managing director and head of the global business unit.
Earlier this year, Nomura Asset Management named Douglas Stewart as head of distribution covering EMEA and LatAm.
Lam has more than 25 years of industry experience and joins Nomura from AXA Investment Managers Asia, where he was managing director and head of client group core APAC. Prior to this, he held senior roles at BNP Paribas, Franklin Templeton Investments Asia, Deutsche Asset Management and Credit Agricole Asset Management.
Citadel, Jane Street, Hudson River, Susquehanna, Two Sigma and Virtu filled half their retail orders close to mid-price, while for the entire market 28% of trades were executed worse than NBBO during a volatile period for equities.
US retail equity investors were rewarded handsomely for the predictability their flows provided to top market makers during the tariff turmoil of April, according to analysis of Rule 605 filings. The $666 million price improvement versus national best bid offer (NBBO) compares with far worse execution for the market as a whole.
In a new data visualisation, Global Trading examines the distribution of execution quality by Citadel Securities, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Susquehanna through its G1X subsidiary, Two Sigma Securities, and Virtu, comparing their effective-over-quoted (EFQ) spread distributions to the overall market.
Out of the six wholesalers, Susquehanna/G1X presents the most competitive execution with nearly 40% below 0.25 EFQ indicating that 40% of the trades they fill for retail are within a quarter of the best bid or offer to mid-price.
Jane Street fills were 55% of the time above 0.5 EFQ, Two Sigma securities fills were 52% above 0.5, Citadel Securities the largest retail market maker had a normal looking distribution of its EFQ with its median EFQ at 0.43. Virtu’s EFQ were spread across 0.2 to 0.8 EFQ with its median at 0.5 while Hudson River trading EF were concentrated between 0.2 and 0.5 EFQ.
Expressed in dollars, Citadel provided the greatest price improvement of $251 million during April, followed by Virtu and Jane Street. The total $666 million improvement is more than double the monthly price improvement provided by the same six firms over the previous year, demonstrating the importance of retail flow during volatile market conditions.
A more surprising finding of our analysis related to the EFQ was that for the entire US market (defined as all trades reported through the Security Information Processor and the associated Consolidated Tape) a proportion of more than 15%, when share weighted, or more than 27% when notional weighted, of trades happen outside of the NBBO.
According to Andriy Shkilko, professor of finance at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, who has researched execution quality, “Large trades executing on dark pools, for example, or crossing networks… sometimes execute at prices that are not exactly the NBBO.”
Our analysis specifically focuses on price improvement, assessed through the EFQ ratio, which compares the executed price to the quoted price at the order placement time. The EFQ ratio is computed as twice the difference between the executed price and the concurrent mid-price (the midpoint between the National Best Bid and Offer, NBBO), divided by the prevailing NBBO spread. Under best execution rules, covered orders must execute within the NBBO. Thus, an EFQ of 0 indicates execution precisely at mid-price, a ratio of 0.5 is at the midpoint between the mid price and the prevailing bid or offer. A ratio of one corresponds to executing on the bid or offer.
Another relevant measure within Rule 605 disclosures is the realised spread, which captures price deviation five minutes post-execution. However, this current approach to measuring realized spreads is insufficient for accurately assessing high-frequency execution quality. To address this, substantial changes to Rule 605 disclosures are expected by the end of 2025, introducing more granular metrics measured at intervals of fifty milliseconds, one second, fifteen seconds, one minute, and five minutes.
The plots above compare the EFQ distributions of prominent US retail wholesalers with corresponding stocks reported through the Securities Information Processor (SIP). SIP-listed securities are consolidated through the SIP, which provides standardised NBBO data.
For an accurate comparative analysis, our dataset filters out SIP trades to include only continuous trading hours, specifically trades where the bid-ask spread was not crossed and both bid and offer sizes exceeded one lot. We also only considered trades without any specific flags, odd lot trades, bunched sold trades and bunched trades.
Additionally, we matched trades for wholesalers and the SIP in terms of comparable size and stock selection.
For the all-market comparison, EFQ ratios are computed relative to the NBBO prevailing up to 25 milliseconds before the recorded execution timestamp. Our analysis presents two types of distribution weighting: Share-weighted EFQ distribution: EFQ ratios for each trade are weighted by the number of shares traded, Notional-weighted EFQ distribution: EFQ ratios are weighted using the monthly Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP) assigned to each stock and calculated with all the trades of the month reported on the SIP.
Pedro Guazo, head of international and responsible investing, Northern Trust Asset Management
Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM) has named Pedro Guazo as head of international and responsible investing and CEO of Northern Trust Global Investments, effective August.
NTAM holds US$1.3 trillion in assets under management. Almost 60% (US$758 billion) of these assets are equities.
In the London-based role, Guazo is responsible for leading the asset management business across Europe, the Middle East and APAC, and the firm’s global responsible investing platform. He reports to Danial Gamba, NTAM president.
Earlier this year, NTAM onboarded two investment strategists for its international and North American divisions.
Guazo has more than 20 years of industry experience, most recently serving as CEO of the United Nations (UN) Joint Staff Pension Fund’s Office of Investment Management. Prior to this, he was a chief financial officer at the UN and the World Food Programme.
Slawomir Rzeszotko, head of ETF sales and trading, Jane Street
Active exchange traded funds (ETFs) have continued their 62-month run of consecutive net inflows, with a record US$1.39 trillion worth of assets now invested in the instruments. Yet these vehicles are often systematic strategies with a new name, traders at a Bloomberg event suggested.
During the Bloomberg’s ETFs in Depth forum earlier this month, Slawomir Rzeszotko, head of ETF sales and trading at Jane Street, pointed out that many ETFs labelled as active are in fact systematic strategies.
“From a risk, hedge and market making perspective they’re similar to any other ETF,” he said.
Slawomir Rzeszotko, head of ETF sales and trading, Jane Street
Rzeszotko went on to question the value of semi-transparent ETFs, which have received a tepid reception after recently launching in Europe
Semi-transparent ETFs disclose their holdings on a quarterly rather than daily basis, similarly to mutual funds. Launched in the US in 2019 and in Europe earlier this year, they are designed to give investors access to the benefits of ETFs while protecting managers from their strategies being replicated or front-run.
Rzeszotko opined, “these structures have taken a long time to develop but have had little attention from the industry, in terms of asset inflows and how many products are listed. The proportion of semi-transparent ETFs across active ETFs is 5%. The business case needs to be a lot more attractive to make the effort of development worth it.”
Tim Miller, senior trader, Fidelity International
On market liquidity, Tim Miller, senior trader at Fidelity International, affirmed, “actives are more talked about [than passives] at the moment, there’s a higher rate of accumulation. ETF market liquidity is great, but it doesn’t look it. People think the liquidity isn’t there because they’re using single stock metrics to look at baskets.”
“We should talk about tradability rather than liquidity when it comes to ETFs,” argued
Pravin Bagree, head of ETF capital markets, UBS
, head of ETF capital markets at UBS.
“People misallocate or choose the wrong products because they are taking a cash equity approach.”
“ETFs are historically passive, but there is nothing that prevents them from taking active strategies. It’s easy to pitch active vs passive as an industry gimmick, but from a liquidity perspective you have to look through the wrapper to the underlying,” added Gregoire Blanc, global head of capital markets at Amundi.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Big xyt had a deficit of £10 million. The correct figure for the deficit is £10,000.
Market analytics provider Big xyt has withdrawn its bid to become the European Consolidated Tape Provider (CTP) for Equities and ETFs, citing insufficient financial support after extensive consultations with stakeholders.
The company announced on 25 June its decision to exit the bidding process just two weeks after entering. CEO Robin Mess explained that big xyt joined late due to industry concerns around competition, governance, and data quality. Despite recognising strong support for an independent European tape, Mess said, “this vision requires strong, coordinated support across market participants, which could not be secured at this time.”
Big xyt informed ESMA of its withdrawal, effective immediately. The company will continue providing its own market analytics and data services globally.
Big xyt last filed accounts at UK’s Companies House for the year ending 31 December 2024, showed the company had a balance sheet deficit of £10,000. The company announced in November it had raised a further £10 million from Finch Capital.
