Appital has launched Price Discovery Insights, a pre-trade price discovery function, allowing clients to stimulate liquidity at market levels, or outside the spread, and investigate potential pricing and volume before committing to a bookbuild.
The peer-to-peer price discovery and liquidity sourcing provider has launched the service in response to client demand, it said. Using the new function, clients are able to seek feedback from specific firms on potential orders, unlocking latent liquidity. If sufficient demand is captured in price discovery, information anonymously flows back to the originator, launching a bookbuild and realising the liquidity.
Mark Badyra, CEO, commented: “I believe that illiquidity issues can be solved globally by bringing technological innovation into the equity market and providing distinctive functionality to the buyside. With Price Discovery in Appital Insights, firms are able to generate orders that would otherwise not exist, resulting in increased deal flows and liquidity events.”
Buy-side traders retain full control over how they interact with counterparties and platform liquidity, Appital assured, and price discovery processes can be reacted to without an order being generated in the EMS.
Uncommitted order types made during price discovery can be confirmed once a bookbuild is decided on, which improves the chances of success while reducing the time it takes to bookbuild, the firm added. Through the process, continued anonymity for the buy side protects against leakage and price erosion.
Brian Guckian, chief business development officer at Appital, said: “Our clients are very excited about this new price discovery functionality. This is a new and unique workflow that gives clients full control over the bookbuilding process and the ability to proactively stimulate market liquidity.”
Badyra concluded: “With Price Discovery in Appital Insights, we are digitising yet another step in the high-touch trading mechanism. This aligns with our strategy to deliver unique workflows to trading and investment teams.”
Carl Hayes, head of European cash equities, TD Securities
TD Securities has promoted Carl Hayes to head of European cash equities. He reports to Sharon Kim, executive managing director and region head of Europe for TD Securities and senior vice president of TD Bank Group.
In the London-based role, Hayes will support the firm as it continues to expand its presence in European equity markets – a particular focus following its merger with Cowen last year.
On the appointment, Kim stated: “Carl’s leadership will help us further strengthen our multi-asset capabilities and integrate our market insights and quality execution across asset classes. These strengths have earned us a strong reputation in the financial services industry, and Carl and his team’s expertise will be key in driving our growth in these areas.”
Hayes has more than 20 years of industry experience and has been head of European sales trading at Cowen Execution Services since 2019. Prior to this he spent 12 years with Deutsche Bank, most latterly as head of EMEA equity sales trading.
Hayes commented: “It is a privilege to lead the European Cash Equities team. With the current dynamics in the European markets, I look forward to leveraging our outstanding expertise in high touch, low touch, electronic and program trading, as well as research sales, to enhance our market position and provide exceptional value to our clients.”
Markets Media is delighted to announce that Nick Dunbar is joining Markets Media as managing editor for Global Trading, the market leading equity trading title.
Nick has worked at Risk, Bloomberg, and Economist Group, as well as being a published author (The Devil’s Derivatives, Harvard Business Review Press) and a co-producer on Channel 4 Dispatches.
Dan Barnes, CEO, Europe at Markets Media says, “We are delighted to welcome Nick onboard as the managing editor of Global Trading, where his data analytical capabilities will open new avenues for editorial insight.”
Nick replaces Lauren McAughtry, who is leaving the firm.
“Laurie has been a great asset to Markets Media, and we wish her all the best for the future.”
Dominic Lowres, head of electronic trading and executions strategies, Investec
Financial services provider Investec Bank has launched an electronic equity trading desk, appointing Dominic Lowres to lead the team. Matthew West has also joined the firm.
Building on the firm’s existing high-touch trading solutions, the new desk allows clients to execute low-touch equity trades across multiple global trading locations and benefit from both its internal liquidity pools and external exchange memberships, Investec explained.
Lowres, who joined Investec as head of electronic trading and executions strategies earlier this year, commented: “Clients are constantly looking at how they can improve execution quality, maximise access to liquidity, reduce their trading costs and ensure ‘best execution’ with partners who can intelligently navigate and innovate in the electronic trading landscape to provide the speed and service they require.”
The desk also allows Investec to service the growing number of digital wallets, resulting from increased engagement with passive investments, and meet growing demands for electronic trading solutions.
Clive Murray, head of equities at the company, noted: “Our approach to trading has always been to put our clients first. One of the services we’ll offer all our clients as part of our overall trading solutions is bespoke trading consultancy, where we leverage our deep insight into the equities market and advise clients on their ideal approach to market access in a unique way. We believe that it’s this highly personalised service that differentiates us from the market and provides real long-term value to clients on a global scale.”
Stéphane Marie-Françoise, Director, Trading, Equities, Unigestion SA
What is special about Geneva?
Imagine a city that blends the vibe and diversity of London and Paris, for example, with the charm and accessibility of a human-scale town. That’s Geneva. This picturesque city offers a large mix of nationalities, where you can explore every corner by bike or on foot.
But what truly sets Geneva apart is its exceptional quality of life. Imagine living in a place with minimal stress, low crime rates, and fantastic weather – Geneva offers all this and more. It’s a city where you can truly enjoy every moment, surrounded by a stunning natural backdrop and a cosmopolitan community.
What are your favourite bars?
As a DJ, I’m definitely involved in Geneva’s nightlife, so I have plenty of recommendations. The “Eaux-Vives” area is my favourite, the atmosphere is really good and the people are cool and friendly. It’s the perfect spot to find great bars, whether you’re looking to have a drink after work, pre-dinner, or continue into the night.
Of course in the summertime I prefer the beach clubs on the lake! My two favourite are La Potinière and Le Blanc Valet. These places hold a special place in my heart as they are where I kickstarted my DJ career.
Where do the locals go to eat?
It’s funny, but genuine locals born and raised in Geneva can be hard to find – I think I only know about ten myself! So, telling you their exact dining spots is a bit of a mystery. However, the restaurant scene in Geneva has exploded over the past decade, offering a real variety of cuisines.
For a great meal, again the Eaux-Vives, Pâquis, and Plainpalais areas are top choices. Regardless of the season, my personal favourites are “Le Bologne” and “Eat Me.” Le Bologne is a charming vintage bistro that emphasises high-quality, seasonal ingredients in its dishes. Eat Me, on the other hand, serves a delightful mix of international cuisine in small plates designed for sharing. Both places also boast impressive wine lists. I recommend giving them a try!
What’s your favourite ski slope?
That’s a tough question! Ask ten people, and you’ll get ten different answers. Geneva’s location is perfect, with the first ski resorts just a 35-minute drive away. You have the luxury of choosing between the Alps and the Jura, and skiing in France, Switzerland, or Italy. Your choice depends on your skill level, available time, and budget.
For a quick day trip, I love heading to resorts like Les Gets or Flaine, which are just a 50-minute drive away. These smaller resorts retain a natural charm. If I have more time, I prefer to go to the Valais region, where resorts like Zermatt, Nendaz, and Crans-Montana offer spectacular skiing experiences. However, these destinations require a bit more travel time – at least two hours.
Best watchmaker in Geneva?
When it comes to watchmaking in Geneva, there’s no definitive answer. Watches are undoubtedly a significant topic in Geneva.
My favourite brand has always been Swatch – it’s a nostalgic choice from my childhood. However, I’m also exploring other brands and who knows, maybe my preference will change in the future.
Does anyone swim in the lake?
Absolutely, swimming in the lake is in Geneva’s DNA. People swim all year round. In the warmer months, Geneva’s beaches are really busy. Personally, I love taking a refreshing swim during lunch breaks or right after work in the summer.
The lake is also the place for various water sport activities. If you visit Geneva, experiencing the lake is a must.
Genesis Global received the Best Tool for Trading Efficiency award at this year’s European Market’s Choice Awards. Stephen Murphy, co-founder and CEO, spoke to Global Trading about the company’s performance this year and how clients have responded.
What has driven your success this year? We took a series of bold steps this year to make the Genesis Application Platform much more accessible, and to make it easier for financial firms to test and onboard our technology. First, using new tools, users can see the power of the platform at first glance. Next, we transformed testing with a free trial program, so that users experience Genesis by rapidly building applications addressing their own use cases. Finally, for firms ready to use the platform in a production environment, we implemented usage-based pricing to correlate clients’ costs to the value they receive from Genesis. Together, these advances deliver that “eureka” moment when clients grasp the platform’s capabilities and streamline how they make our technology a pillar of their digitalisation strategies.
We are also rolling out product enhancements more quickly. June marked the start of formal monthly releases that deliver upgrades to the platform’s development suite, runtime environment and component marketplace. We want to make developers as productive as possible, and our rapid cadence for releases ensures we continuously arm them with new capabilities.
How have you focused investment to support this growth? We have invested heavily this year in tools that help developers get up and running on Genesis and bolster how the platform accelerates building complex financial applications. For example, Create is a new web-based tool which lets users build applications in minutes by configuring business objects, data sources, data queries and UI foundations.
It’s code-free, but interacts directly with the platform, so you can start very robust applications. It is a great way for developers to learn our platform and experience for themselves how Genesis can help them get from whiteboard to market ten times faster than traditional coding. It also allows users to build and reconfigure prototypes, virtually in real time. This is useful when an application has multiple types of users; Create allows the developer to iterate in a proof of concept to drive engagement from business stakeholders.
Another game-changer for developers is the Marketplace, a library of pre-built solutions, templates, components and integrations within the platform which users can import into their projects. Users have access to more than 30 integrations covering market data feeds (Bloomberg, Refinitiv, S&P Global), trade and portfolio systems (Murex, Fidessa, Geneva) and a range of service providers (CTM, Pershing, SS&C).
The Marketplace dramatically accelerates developer productivity because users are simply importing the functionality they need into their projects, rather than building things like data integrations time and time again from scratch.
Complete solutions from Genesis are also part of the Marketplace. These include robust applications for trade allocation, real-time matching, primary markets investing, custody functions, credit insurance and wealth management. From any other vendor, these would be stand-alone products. We’re different. With Genesis, clients have direct access to almost everything we have built, offering a force multiplier for the industry. Of course, users can also customise these solutions with the platform, but they have a profound advantage in leveraging applications prebuilt by Genesis. We continuously add new elements, including large-scale solutions, to the Marketplace.
What has been the response from the industry? Financial markets firms are under tremendous pressure to boost revenue, control costs and reduce risk. While technology is a key strategic lever, it’s highly complex for most firms to modernise and digitalise, in part, because they run on an interdependent set of legacy technologies. Maintaining existing technologies is a massive drain on resources and as a result, according to Gartner, most firms only invest 11 percent of their IT budget on new, innovative technology.
Genesis Global’s Colette Aubertin (l) and Pieternel Kimman (r) receiving the award at the EMCAs on 3rd July.
We lived in that world for a very long time and founded Genesis because we knew that the industry needed a new way to write financial markets grade software.
Clients use Genesis to supercharge six business strategies. Three aim at containing, extending or replacing legacy systems. First, to help financial firms limit dependencies on vendors, we facilitate flexible “scaffolding” around vendor systems. This gives firms the ability to extend the functionality of vendor platforms while creating options to migrate from third party solutions. Second, some legacy technologies need to be enhanced, not replaced. Our ability to integrate with a range of systems makes Genesis uniquely powerful in building new capabilities driven by core systems, helping clients to adopt a best-of-breed approach in their technology selection. Third, Genesis has unmatched ability to help firms quickly and cost-effectively replace end user computing and manual processes, including reliance on spreadsheets, with robust, auditable applications.
To enable new revenue through faster innovation, the Genesis platform makes application development faster and easier and empowers generalist developers to build specialised software. In addition to dramatically accelerating back- and front-end coding, the platform’s embedded runtime environment ensures that compliance, security, resilience and processing power are all financial markets grade. Similarly, these attributes make Genesis a natural foundation for building new high-performance market infrastructure. Octaura, the first electronic trading platform for syndicated loans and CLOs, and Neptune, the fixed income market data hub, are examples of Genesis powering market-changing services.
Finally, improving developer productivity is a critical use case, especially given the cost and scarcity of engineering talent. Enabling developers to build with speed and quality while maintaining rigorous controls helps firms realise their innovative potential. Leading banks are benchmarking engineering productivity, measured by speed to deliver product features, agility and stability of new technology. Genesis delivers across those and other productivity metrics.
The trade-off between inflation and interest rates has never been more important, said Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey in a speech last week – but, the separation between monetary policy and financial stability must also be carefully navigated.
In a speech given at The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas 2024 Economic Symposium, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Bailey suggested, in light of the need to balance both monetary policy and financial stability objectives, a return to the “classical gold standard era of central banking”.
Andrew Bailey, governor, Bank of England
“Recent experiences indicate the larger role of the financial stability objective in modern central banking in contrast to the orthodoxy of the post-1970s era when monetary policy alone came to the fore. This rebalancing in some ways takes us back to the earlier classical gold standard era of central banking,” Bailey posited.
Bailey also suggested that policy setting will need to remain restrictive long enough for inflation to hit the bank’s 2% target. “The course will therefore be a steady one,” Bailey added.
The governor highlighted the difficulties of navigating such a course in the wake of major events such as the pandemic and the Ukraine war, and how central banks must mitigate these pressures while maintaining financial stability and reducing inflation.
Highlighting the UK’s Liability-Driven Investment (LDI) crisis, which began in September 2022 after the Truss government’s mini-budget caused a sell-off in Gilts, Bailey said this was a financial stability, not monetary policy, event, “and the challenge was to structure the intervention and communicate it in a way that reinforced this point”.
In lieu of the LDI event, building strong financial stability “buffers” is the best way to support resilient and competitive financial systems and strong economies, Bailey suggested. “Market events like those of two weeks ago or so will happen; the test is not whether they happen but whether they trigger wider instability. As central banks we operate within systems that are framed by law and institutions to create and preserve stability and prosperity in the public interest.”
Jo Burnham, OpenGamma, said: “The steep rise in initial margin post the mini budget illustrates the fragility of our financial system when under extreme stress. It’s a stark reminder of the importance of strong stress testing to anticipate and mitigate such liquidity crises. These measures are essential for ensuring the resilience of financial markets in the face of unforeseen economic shocks.”
Jamie Crank, incoming group executive for technology and data, ASX
ASX has appointed Jamie Crank as group executive for technology and data, effective 9th September.
The appointment follows “an extensive external and internal search process”, ASX stated on LinkedIn.
Crank has more than 25 years of industry experience and has worked at ASX since 2016. Currently serving as general manager for trading and markets, he has held a number of senior roles including general manager for information and connectivity services and general manager for issuer services. Prior to this, he was head of product at Chi-X Australia.
Earlier in his career Crank spent more than eight years with the London Stock Exchange, most latterly as head of commercial management.
Johnson Chui, incoming managing director and head of global issuer services, HKEX
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) has appointed Johnson Chui as managing director and head of global issuer services, effective 2nd September.
In the role, Chui will lead HKEX’s global issuer services teams in Hong Kong, Mainland China, London and Singapore, supporting the firm as it diversifies and expands its listed issuers base. He reports to Wilfred Yiu and Glenda So, co-heads of markets.
Chui has more than 20 years of industry experience and joins HKEX from Nomura, where he was vice chairman of investment banking and head of equity capital markets for Asia (excluding Japan).
Prior to this he spent more than a decade with Credit Suisse, first as head of equity capital markets for Greater China and later as a managing director and head of equity capital markets for APAC.
He has also held equity capital markets roles at Citi and Goldman Sachs.
On the appointment, Yiu commented: “We are very pleased to welcome Johnson to HKEX. With more than 25 years of experience working in international capital markets, we know that Johnson will be a great addition to our leadership team and will help us to reinforce HKEX’s position as a leading global exchange with issuers.”
Historically best known for its front-office utility in saving traders from ‘swivel-chair’ workflows, having applications seamlessly work together is increasingly valued in the middle office, by the people behind financial firms’ technology.
Dan Schleifer, president, interop.io
“Interoperability has been key for enabling business users to streamline workflows and gain efficiency, but the technologists inside the organization face their own set of challenges,” said Dan Schleifer, President and Co-founder at interop.io. “Interoperability is becoming a core piece of architecture that technologists use to streamline and simplify the way that they build, maintain, and eventually retire technology.”
Schleifer noted that many investment managers, hedge funds and brokerage firms need to replace ‘legacy’ technology that might be 20 or 30 years old, but they can’t pull the plug until new technology that fully covers all functionality is up and running. Interoperability enables enterprises to carry on their business while incrementally upgrading technology.
“Firms have to basically build whole new systems – OMS, EMS, CRM, risk analytics – from scratch, in parallel with maintaining the legacy systems,” Schleifer told Markets Media. “Interoperability is being used as a way to bridge the gap between legacy and modern, allowing them to rebuild the technology piece by piece instead of having to do it all at once.”
Schleifer said the 24-page PDF aims to fill an informational gap: “There was no clear message to technologists that their success in solving business problems could carry over to solving problems for themselves. We wanted to put together this ebook as a plain-language guide for technologists to better understand what interoperability can do for them.”
The ebook covers four areas: the investments financial services firms make toward technology; the industry problem of hindered innovation, and how interoperability can help solve these problems; and real-world use cases and examples.
Global IT spending in financial services firms was projected to reach $547 billion in 2023, though fewer than half of industry executives reported satisfaction with the results of their technology investments, the ebook noted. Interoperability can break barriers to innovation and boost return on investment by clearing a path from legacy to modern technology, creating a refined and integrated application management strategy, and increasing IT velocity by eliminating duplicate efforts and streamlining development.
Mark Gibbons, Global Head of Information Delivery & Solution Architect at BNY, offered this perspective in the ebook: “Collaborating with interop.io meant we could build the platform on our own global enterprise technology while leveraging interop.io’s user experience. Together, we’re delivering value for clients by freeing up colleagues to focus on higher impact work.”
Another client said that by using interop they will save more than ten person years of development effort as they modernize their technology stack.
“We have clients that have hundreds of applications deployed to thousands of different users in different mixes, across different asset classes, different functions, front, middle and back office, built in a dozen different technologies,” Schleifer said. “Those organizations are held back by that baggage.”
“Interoperability lays out the path for them to rationalize their portfolio of applications, streamline, simplify, and reduce duplication, all to innovate faster – which is really what technologists want to do,” Schleifer continued. “They want to build new, valuable things, and they’re being held back. We want to show them the path that our other clients have taken toward unleashing that innovation.”
Schleifer said overall, interoperability for buy-side, sell-side, and wealth management technologists is in its “middle innings,” with some firms far along and others still early in their journeys.
A bit more than a year after its own transformational merger, interop.io is poised to drive the expansion of interoperability. “It’s been a good merger – we’ve been having a good time bringing the cultures together, and it has allowed us to accelerate the innovation that our clients want,” Schleifer said.
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