Sibbern will succeed Jos Dijsselhof, who is set to step down as CEO to pursue a new professional opportunity in the Middle East, following seven years with SIX. Since joining SIX as CEO in 2018, Dijsselhof has helped developed the company commercially, while also expanding its international presence. Dijsselhof will remain at SIX until the end of February 2025 to ensure a smooth transition.

Fixed income investment bank KNG Securities added Mert Kisacik to its fixed income sales team, where he will hold responsibility for Turkish and Israeli markets. As part of the role, Kisacik will focus on finding liquidity in both sovereign and corporate bonds for the firm’s clients, with a primary focus on hard currency bonds. He joined KNG from Morgan Stanley, where he spent the last two years, most recently as part of the bank’s emerging markets cross asset sales team. Elsewhere in his career, Kisacik worked at Yapi Kredi, one of Turkey’s first nationwide commercial banks.

Kezar Markets’ chief executive officer, Whit Conary is set to retire from his role by the end of this year following 18 years in the position. Steve Miele, who currently serves as chief strategy officer, has been appointed new chief executive officer of Kezar Marekts, effective 1 January 2025.

Conary’s capital markets career spans four decades, with his retirement paving the way for Kezar Markets’ continued growth plans. Meanwhile, Kazer Markets noted that the appointment of Steve Miele as CEO is a natural progression following his role overseeing strategy, sales, and product development at LeveL ATS and Kezar Markets for 17 years.

The post People Moves Monday: SIX, KNG Securities and Kezar Markets appeared first on The TRADE.

Bjørn Sibbern

Bjørn Sibbern has been appointed chief executive officer at SIX, effective 1 January 2025.

Since the beginning of the year, Sibbern has been leading the international exchange business of SIX as global head exchanges and a member of the group executive board.

He brings more than 20 years’ experience in capital markets, having held a range of positions at Nasdaq, OMX Exchanges and E*TRADE Bank Denmark – the latter of which he served as CEO.

“I am delighted that in Bjørn, we have been able to appoint a proven and highly connected capital markets expert from our ranks as new CEO,” said Thomas Wellauer, chairman of SIX. 

“Since joining SIX a year ago, we have experienced Bjørn as a strong, highly motivated and proactive leader. With his excellent track record, Bjørn has the necessary international expertise and leadership qualities to further pursue and accelerate the growth path of SIX”.

Sibbern will succeed Jos Dijsselhof, who is set to step down as CEO to pursue a new professional opportunity in the Middle East, following seven years with SIX.

Since joining SIX as CEO in 2018, Dijsselhof has helped developed the company commercially, while also expanding its international presence.

He successfully implemented the strategic realignment of SIX and further diversified the company’s business portfolio.

Under his leadership, SIX executed key acquisitions, such as the purchase of the Spanish Stock Exchange BME, as well as other international investments, particularly in the financial information sector.

Most recently, SIX agreed to aquire Aquis Exchange in a landmark deal set to elevate the exchange operator’s exchange offering throughout Europe.

Read more: SIX agrees to acquire Aquis Exchange

Dijsselhof will remain at SIX until the end of February 2025 to ensure a smooth transition.

“On behalf of the board of directors of SIX, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Jos for his dedicated leadership,” added Wellauer.

“Over the past seven years, he has strengthened the international footprint of SIX, championed innovation such as SDX, and has been instrumental in transforming and modernising the corporate culture of SIX, thus positioning the company for further success. We wish Jos all the best in his new endeavours.”

The post SIX promotes its global exchange head to become CEO as Dijsselhof steps down appeared first on The TRADE.

Last week Aquis and Cboe announced that they were teaming up to explore a bid to become the EU’s equity consolidated tape.

Named SimpliCT, the new venture will be based in the Netherlands and co-owned by Cboe and Aquis as equal shareholders.

The endeavour would be competing with the SIX-backed initative, EuroCTP, which was first announced in the third quarter of 2023 and is backed by 14 exchanges as its shareholders.

Subsequently, SIX has said today that following completion of the acquisition, “if Aquis continues to explore or is pursuing a bid to perform the equity consolidated tape provider role, SIX intends to withdraw from EuroCTP, the consortium for the consolidated tape provider role that SIX is participating in”.

Read more: SIX agrees to acquire Aquis Exchange 

Speaking at the time SimpliCT was announced, Alasdair Haynes, chief executive of Aquis, asserted: “This proposed joint venture would not only represent a cost-efficient, robust business model that integrates advanced complementary, proprietary technologies, it would also be designed to deliver fair compensation for data contribution, aligning the interests of contributors and consumers.” 

This news from SIX around its withdrawal may come as a shock to the market as EuroCTP remains the only confirmed bidder for the European Union equities tape thus far, though others have made public their interest and potential to enter the tender process. 

Read more: European exchanges launch JV for CTP tender

Chief executive of EuroCTP Eglantine Desautel previously told The TRADE that EuroCTP is now in the process of firming up its plans to make its official bid in 2025 and has finalised the shortlisting process for its prospective technology partners and is working towards a final selection for August or September. 

The JV is made up of participants across 26 of the EU’s member states and includes: BME, Deutsche Boerse Group, Euronext exchanges (Borsa Italiana, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Lison, Paris, Oslo Børs), Luxembourg Stock Exchange, and Nasdaq exchanges (Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Iceland, Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius), among others.

The post SIX could withdraw from EuroCTP consortium following Aquis deal appeared first on The TRADE.

The evolution of data has moved on and the focus is now on taking action with the data whether that’s trading, investments, risk management, or anything else – it’s about making a difference with the data. 

Now it’s about how we present data so that it’s ready to use and ready to trade. This includes asking key questions like whether data is ready for regulation, or for risk, etc. It’s about applying a use case for the data and making a difference with it instead of just providing a large volume of it. Previously it was stuck on a database and expected to be sorted out by whoever was accessing it, with the onus on companies to pipe the information around a firm and create applications which can use it. Now, instead of having to wrangle it a certain way, the market is able to take that increasingly sophisticated approach of having true data as a service. Making the difference with data is all about how it’s presented and proving effectiveness with use cases.

SIX’s most recent future of finance report found that almost half of asset managers believe data velocity is the key challenge for enabling analytics to drive growth, why is this?

We believe that the trend with data is all centred around the volume, the variety and the velocity and specific to the velocity is real time data. It used to be the domain of the real time trader but actually the entire industry is moving from the back- and middle-office into the front-office. Now, the timeliness requirements are being needed all the way through the process. It’s necessary to have that data available in real time because if you see the market moving, you want to be able to recalculate your risk immediately. No one wants to have to wait for end of day anymore. 

Processes that used to be end of day or even end of month are now intra- or same day. Additionally, intra-day risk management is much more real time than it ever was and that is all across the industry. Regulators’ stance is now focused on the industry understanding their risk in real time and that has dramatically changed the way that risk managers, middle-office, back-office and asset managers have started to view data. If you have an overnight sanction ruling, then you need to be ready for trading the next morning. It’s a new status quo.

How are asset managers handling this increasing amount of data compliance requirements from regulators?

Historically, some of the activity has effectively been outsourced and been provided to them as a service by the sell-side, but that has changed as regulation on the buy-side has increased. There is now far more onus on the asset manager, for example with investor protection, as they’re required to actually process and manage their own regulations and not be dependent on the sell-side. They’re effectively having to be self-sufficient and understand both their own regulatory risk and the implications of what they’re managing down through their portfolio without handing the responsibility off to their counterpart. 

What this means is that a lot of them are starting to manage data more themselves. They’re demanding services to support that data and taking on approaches focused not just on operational, but also on regulatory and risk management aspects. Some asset managers are effectively creating this supporting infrastructure, in some cases, from scratch. They don’t have the legacy infrastructure challenges that some of the sell-side has. You can see that with the rise in roles like chief data officer much more at asset managers now.

A Coalition Greenwich/SIX report in August 2023 found that 80% of buy-side firms expected market data spending to go up across the board, how is this playing out? 

That has certainly not abated and while I don’t think we will see a kind of overnight change, a trend is emerging. It’s linked to the previous point where, the more that you do yourself, the more that you have to have the ingredients available – the sources of information. However, it’s also about what’s driving that. The rise in passive investing is one example, driving a massive increase in ETFs. As ETF issuers operate with tight margins, technology is going to play a key role in helping firms to drive changes in their business models. And technology consumes data. SIX acquired Ultumus, ETF data and platform provider, to address just these challenges. 

Another facet again is regulation. Every time you have a regulation, that text then has to be turned into something that you could report on, file, demonstrate and you need to have independent and trusted data to do that.

Also, technology is incredibly data hungry, so every time you hear the word automation or digitisation or data science or AI, that’s all about data being needed to drive it. You can’t just feed in any old data in order to answer a demand at the other end, it’s all about trusted data being the fuel of those technologies that enable firms to make quicker, smarter, better decisions. It’s because of all of these interlinked requirements that more and more firms are investing in data – many times it means that they want to buy the cakes, they don’t want the ingredients so much. This is data as a service. 

Why has the market been seeing an increased focus on fixed income data across the market? 

Fixed income is driven largely by the inflationary and interest rate environment. So, when interest rates were low, fixed income was less attractive of course, but with inflation and interest rates that has really kickstarted an increased demand for fixed income. We recently closed the acquisition of FactEntry – a data supplier for fixed income – to really bolster our data coverage.

Moves like this are again linked to making it easier for customers who want to be able to access things their preferred way as a service. They want to be able to determine when they consume it and how they consume it and we’re getting much better as an industry about tapping into those needs and use cases.

The post Fireside Friday with… SIX’s Marion Leslie appeared first on The TRADE.

The acquisition closed yesterday 27 March. Financial details are yet to be disclosed.

Marion Leslie, head of financial information and member of SIX’s executive board highlighted how the deal marks a significant step in the firm’s growth plans: “FactEntry’s expertise and data offerings will greatly enhance our fixed income data capabilities and enable us to provide even greater value to our customers.

“This acquisition represents a significant milestone in our plans to broaden the breadth and depth of our cross-asset content. By combining FactEntry’s expertise with our own, we are creating a truly compelling global cross-asset data provider for the front, middle, and back office.”

Read more: Fireside Friday…with SIX’s Jos Dijsselhof

FactEntry’s offering includes reference data and corporate actions which complement SIX’s existing cross-asset data capabilities, according to the firm.

SIX is also set to leverage FactEntry’s data collection and processing following completion of the deal, set to accelerate SIX’s time to market for new products and services.

Relatedly, a SIX and Coalition Greenwich report last August found that 80% of buy-side firms surveyed expect spending to go up across the board for market data in the next year.

With buy-side market data costs on the rise asset managers were shown to be tapping fixed income in particular, along with equities and exchange traded funds for the greatest spend looking forward. The report found that buy-side asset managers expected fixed income market data spend to go up by 13% in the next year, followed by 10% for equities and 10% for ETFs.

The post SIX picks up majority stake in fixed income data provider FactEntry appeared first on The TRADE.

Major crypto assets, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), are covered by the indices which SIX claims will give a comprehensive snapshot of the market and its performance.

These new indices will also function as benchmarks for AsiaNext’s crypto derivatives trading platform and institutional investors worldwide.

The indices are built on a transparent rules-based methodology – sourcing data from multiple exchanges – enabling precise pricing, valuation and performance tracking which can be used to support analysis and decision making within the crypto market.

The SIX Reference Rate Crypto Indices provide the BTC and ETH benchmark price in USD on an hourly basis, while the BTC and ETH SIX Real-Time Indices will be published every second.

“The introduction of these BTC and ETH Indices underlines our dedication to delivering sophisticated and well-tailored solutions for very specific use-cases, such as crypto derivatives trading,” said  Christian Bahr, head of index services, financial information at SIX.  

“I am confident that these benchmarks will serve as an indispensable tool for AsiaNext and foster the creation of an ecosystem between derivative exchanges and institutional investors”.

Digital asset trading venue for institutional investors, AsiaNext, which was founded by SIX and SBI Digital Asset Holdings, seeks to provide institutions with a secure platform to execute their market strategies and trade confidently.

AsiaNext’s partnership with SIX bridges together the tradition financial industry and the crypto ecosystem, helping the crypto industry move towards more robust methodologies, fair and transparent valuation as well as product standardisation.

“We are pleased to partner with SIX for an industry benchmark for the crypto market that underscores our commitment to providing institutional clients with robust crypto derivatives trading including standardised performance evaluation and timely risk management to help them make more informed investment decisions and meet regulatory requirements,” said Sudeep Chatterjee, head of product at AsiaNext.

“The SIX Reference Rate Crypto and SIX Real-Time Crypto Indices are accessible for tracking and analysis through AsiaNext’s institutional crypto derivatives platform, as well as through the data feeds from SIX.”

The post SIX launches crypto reference rates and real-time indices for institutional investors appeared first on The TRADE.

What’s important to remember is that the implementation isn’t about new rules, it’s about amending an existing regulation. It is a significant change and improvement of the existing Emir regulation which has been around now for more than 10 years.

The purpose of this change and the introduction of new the amendments is to raise data quality. Market participants will need to report – under EU and UK regulation – on whether the data is good, correct and transparent. There is still a lot of room for improvement around data quality and the means by which data is provided. This gives the authorities every right to carry out their supervisory activity.

Clearly, there’s a market need for this development. Refit is aimed at improving data quality, and translating this idea through implementation is essential.

Why is the regulation being implemented in the EU (April) before the UK (September)?

The reason lies in the separate regulatory landscapes. In the wake of Brexit, European Union and the UK have become increasingly complex. The UK, formally belonging to the European Union, previously fell under the same regulation . However, now another regulatory approach has been established, running parallel to the rest of Europe. Regardless of whether the UK regulation ends up mirroring the EU one, it remains that the UK is completely autonomous and independent now. These timelines therefore do not need to be linked – which is not necessarily a negative thing.

Implementing later puts the UK in an advantageous position from which to learn from any problems or errors. On the flip side, there is an additional threat because the period between April and September will require entities to follow two different procedures. Entities active under both legislations are going to need as much harmony and similarity as possible. Ideally, nothing would be different, but if it is, this means additional development, effort, cost, time. So, from that perspective, the more united the better.

What’s important to remember is that refit is happening independently of UK and EU activity. It forms part of a process to improve the Emir regulation that has been in the works for a decade, way before the implementation of Brexit. Therefore, there needs to be a conscious effort to prevent duplication of cost, effort, and overall burden on the industry.

Is there a readiness gap amongst market participants when it comes to Emir refit?

The readiness of market participants varies quite a bit. There is a huge community of entities who are obliged to carry out corresponding derivative trading reporting. This means that we’re talking about totally different clients and therefore the preparedness is quite different amongst them.

They’re all facing different challenges and there’s no straight answer as to how prepared the clients are. Some started preparing very early on, some have more capabilities in-house or access to external support  and these firms are well advanced, with some rolled out already and early birds already testing for some time. We can see the number of clients who are starting to test increase. On the other hand, other entities are only just starting to look into this seriously.

An important thing to note is that it is the role of the entities offering services to market participants, to take over their reporting obligation from a technical perspective. Despite the presence of the intermediaries who are offering this service, which some players may outsource to, the responsibility, to perform correct reporting remains with the market participant. This is something which cannot be delegated.

Overall, the readiness level has increased in the last month or so and is continuing upwards. It’s important not to underestimate these changes.

What is the main thing market players should bear in mind when it comes to the regulatory changes on the horizon?

On the one hand, refit is not a new regulation, it is an enhancement, so you need to approach it from that perspective. Because of this, the supervisors carrying out their activities are not going to provide a grace period. It is not likely to be a case of ‘we have implemented this, and we understand that there are teething problems’. Rather, it is a case of starting to run with it as it is introduced. Regulators are expecting the market to perform their activities from the get-go.  

Across refit, the main area emphasised is data quality and the way to pursue this is the introduction of ISO 20022 to ensure reporting consistency across market participants and TRs, use of ‘common data’ fields, removal of proprietary fields and consistent application of guidelines and rules.

The increase of the number of reportable fields to over 200 aims to contribute to this goal, and although I am a defender of “less is more,” perhaps in this case it would mean to look at this from the wrong perspective. The issues with data quality under the current Emir  regime have often resulted from the room for interpretation. The new standard with the inbuild validations and the additional reporting fields will help to make this more prescriptive and precise.

So, from the perspective of how market participants should address this – the changes which are aimed at improvements to achieve a better data quality – focusing and understanding it should not be viewed as an additional burden of reporting, but rather as an opportunity.

The post If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail: As Emir refit looms, lack of readiness not an option for market participants appeared first on The TRADE.

The changes came as a result of increased operational complexity stemming from the previously reported merger of Credit Suisse by UBS, which has been documented extensively by The TRADE over the past year.

UBS agreed to take over Credit Suisse in a deal which moved forward without the approval of shareholders, under emergency ordinance issued by the Swiss Federal Council. At the time, the Swiss National Bank said that the takeover provided a solution “to secure financial stability and protect the Swiss economy in this exceptional situation”. 

Following the takeover, UBS’ electronic trading responsibility was split into two distinct parts, with Chris Marsh continuing to be responsible for the electronic trading product and Mark Goodman assuming the role of head of electronic trading. Elsewhere, UBS made several other role changes, including Srichakri Adhikarapatti taking responsibility of the Central Risk Book (CRB) – a critical part of the execution services business, as well as joining the Execution Services Management Forum (ESMF). Zain Nizami, global head of cash equity trading, also joined ESMF as well as having oversight of CRB risk.

6. SIX head of equities departs for Citadel Securities

Another people move made our top 10 most read stories this year, with SIX’s head of equities, Adam Matuszewski, resigning from the exchange group after over 10 years to take up a new role at Citadel Securities.

Adam Matuszewski

Based in London, Matuszewski joined the market maker as its new head of business development for EMEA. He spent the last ten and a half years at SIX in equities focused roles, originally joining the exchange in 2013 in a trainee product management role for equities. Since his initial role, Matuszewski rose up through the ranks going on to become product manager for equities, senior product manager and finally head of the asset class.

Matuszewski filled in a gap left by Matteo Balladori, who The TRADE revealed had left Citadel after nearly six years to join Nasdaq European Markets as a senior sales director. Prior to joining Citadel Securities, Balladori served at the London Stock Exchange in its secondary market division for almost two years.

5. Northern Trust promotes from within for new head of global foreign exchange

Our fifth most read story of the year was, once again, a change in personnel. This time being the internal promotion from Northern Trust for its new head of global foreign exchange within its capital markets business.

Dane Fannin was named global head of global foreign exchange (GFX) and securities finance. In his new role, he became responsible for innovation and business growth across Northern Trust’s suite of GFX and securities finance solutions. Fannin took up the role after spending the last 17 years at Northern Trust within its capital markets business in Asia Pacific and London, most recently as its global head of securities finance. He originally joined the bank in 2006 in a securities lending role.

Northern Trust has made a string of key appointments over the last year including Guido Baltussen, who was appointed international head of quantitative strategies at Northern Trust Asset Management, a newly created role in which he oversees EMEA and APAC. In this role, Baltussen focuses on quantitative research and innovation, thought leadership, and investment strategy, leveraging his extensive factor investing expertise. Elsewhere, former Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse alumnus, Sonia Davies, joined Northern Trust as senior vice president of Integrated Trading Solutions, the firm’s outsourced trading business. She joined Northern Trust from Software-as-a-Service provider, Enfusion, where she served as EMEA head of partnerships and alliances.

More recently, Northern Trust tapped a 22-year BlackRock alumnus to become the new president of its asset management division. Daniel Gamba joined Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM) as president, joining the asset manager after over two decades with BlackRock, most recently as its co-head of fundamental equities.

The post The TRADE’s most read stories of the year part two: A string of leadership changes appeared first on The TRADE.

The move comes on the back off surging client demand for insight into where corporates are moving and why.

Speaking to The TRADE Annelotte De Nanassy, senior product manager, financial information at SIX, explained: “SIX Bot was created as a direct result of feedback from our clients. Historically, monitoring corporate actions has been a highly labour-intensive process, costing the back-office departments of asset managers and investment banks significant time and money.

“The key objective SIX has with these types of innovations is to make data relating to corporate actions more freely accessible, increasing workflow efficiency for processing teams.”

The new tool built allows financial market professionals to ask intuitive questions relating to corporate actions events and provides information on over 70 corporate action event types. 

This is relayed to more than 600,000 financial market professionals on markets’ infrastructure and technology platform, Symphony, while real-time data sharing platform ipushpull will enable chat and data integration with Symphony for the application.

Speaking in an announcement, De Nanassy highlighted that the offering comes as the market seeks to manage the increasing complexity and volume of corporate actions through more automation.

“The SIX Bot will optimise the current workflow within corporate actions teams, offering higher operational efficiency. This provides firms with a competitive edge in what is a historically difficult area of the market to process, putting them in a much better position to service their clients.”

SIX Bot integrates into existing team workflows, specifically answering simple requests with a corresponding ISIN code. The product is designed to return corporate actions data, which includes: event type, key dates and history.

The launch follows that of the Corporate Action Calendar by SIX in September which allows clients to track and process upcoming evets including M&As, dividends, and stock buybacks across all their portfolio companies. 

Robert Friend, head of market solutions products and partnerships at Symphony, said: “We are very excited to partner with SIX, a global leading provider of reference data and bring their Corporate Actions Bot to Symphony’s more than 600,000 strong user community across front, middle and back office. The bot will revolutionise the way financial market professionals consume and process Corporate Actions. 

“It will transform a currently very manual, time consuming and error prone process into a real time on demand one, supporting the market and regulatory need for fast access to quality data.”

The post SIX unveils new bot providing clients enhanced insight into corporates’ movements appeared first on The TRADE.

As asset managers continue to look for ways to fully capitalise on data, a new SIX report has found that almost half view data velocity as the key challenge in enabling analytics to drive growth.

This is more than the number which highlighted volume, or even variety, of data as the key challenges.

For fund managers, data velocity – specifically the speed at which data is generated, collected, and distributed – is one of the key considerations in large part because of the fast-moving nature of the area in which they operate.

SIX explained: “Given that asset managers invest in and distribute products from a broad array of fast-moving asset classes, access to near real-time market and reference data can make the difference between outperforming or underperforming the benchmark.” 

While asset managers were concerned with slow data delivery, 41% of investment banks highlighted limited variety when it came to the data they are able to consume, and the same percentage of wealth managers confirmed that for them volume was the primary consideration.

Overall, the 2023 future of finance study found that while most companies are “generally confident” around evolving data and analytics, all agree there is space for improvement in terms of their own data supply chains.

Looking at the specifics of where data is set to facilitate development, 48% of executives confirmed that they expect emerging data analytics to be of most benefit in ‘trading, investment analysis and portfolio management’ within their businesses over the next five years. This focus on front-office was further shown by 46% of respondents highlighting ‘sales and distribution’.

Elsewhere, the report found that AI came out on top as the biggest enabler to organisational growth with 38% highlighting it, while ‘high quality data’ and ‘analytics capabilities and alternative asset classes (such as digital assets, private markets, infrastructure)’ were both recognised by 35% of respondents.

Berta Ares Lomban, head program and innovation office, financial information at SIX, said: “A deep understanding of data underpins AI’s potential to deliver accurate and valuable insights. In the data-intensive world of capital markets, this attention to detail becomes a powerful asset, where precision in data handling can have a significant and positive impact when AI is deployed at scale.” 

The report found that for those companies focused on AI, quicker and increasingly accurate data analysis (for better decision making) is the area set to deliver the most client value.

While 55% of respondents shared this view, overall, the asset management individuals were most in favour, chosen by 58% of those surveyed.  

Shai Popat, head of product and commercial strategy, financial information at SIX, discussed the future outlook for the market, asserting that data is only set to be increasingly important: “To effectively gain a competitive edge in a data-driven world, firms require a combination of advanced technology, data management practices, regulatory compliance, and a deep understanding of the financial domain. Indeed, data and analytical capabilities have never been so strategically important.  

“While different industries face very different challenges with regards to their data, ease of access and the ability to analyse and derive insights from data will be of paramount importance to all players over the coming years. Without this, companies risk failing to remain competitive in an increasingly data-dependent landscape.”

The research from SIX was based on responses from 343 C-suite executives from Europe, North America and Asia. These individuals work across financial institutions, asset managers, wealth managers, investment banks, and asset servicers.

The post Half of asset managers are focused on speed over volume in their quest to fully capitalise on data, finds report appeared first on The TRADE.