Despite the indisputable decline in physical trading practices, it is enduring within an increasingly technological capital markets world which has already put innumerable out-dated practices out of fashion. Market opinion – and moves – suggest that mourning the

Like the return of old Nokia’s and ‘dumbphones’ in the era of the smartphone, a hungering for print in the age of digital, and the comeback of the polaroid camera and vinyl, perhaps there’s just reason why these concepts were once deemed great.

Following the announcement from MIAX last October about plans to launch a new US options electronic exchange and physical trading floor, The TRADE wanted to delve into why open outcry has persisted and the potential for a quiet resurgence of the dying practice. 

Charles Dolan, former executive floor governor at the NYSE, and current COO of Green Impact Exchange (GIX), tells The TRADE that in his experience the human element of trading is a critical component in times of stress, remaining valuable despite technological advancement.

“In the past there were 5,000 people who worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and now there’s probably 300. We couldn’t continue to do what we were doing manually in an electronic world. That being said, human judgement is critical in terms of taking control of situations that get out of hand. That’s the overarching thought process as to why [physical trading floors] are important.” 

The value placed on the face-to-face auction system, though indisputably less than in times gone by, is proven by its prevailing presence, with MIAX just the latest to invest in the practice. 

Once approved, MIAX’s new options venue, named MIAX Sapphire, will open a physical trading floor in Miami in H2 2024, with plans to commence electronic trading operations next quarter, pending regulatory approval from the SEC.

At the time, Shelly Brown, executive vice president, strategic planning and business development, Miami International Holdings, explained that the new exchange, combined with a live trading floor, is set to be particularly effective in the trading of those larger, more complex orders.

Echoing this notion, Anthony Montesano, head of derivatives market structure at Cboe, tells The TRADE that in his experience it is the larger, more complex orders that are routed to the floor, as more sophisticated, orders often want – and benefit from – a little bit more high touch versus the very simple order flow.

He explains: “If somebody’s entering a huge notional-sized order into the marketplace, they might not want to put that on-screen. If the order is routed through a floor broker, they can source liquidity, manage the order and get true price discovery.

“When you look on-screen, the size and price you see in the screens isn’t necessarily the full market, it’s what the market makers are comfortable quoting electronically. There’s often much, much more liquidity behind those on-screen prices. When brokers are facing off with a whole crowd full of highly capitalised traders, they can work the order a bit better, control the execution and have more effective price discovery.”

Read more: Farewell open outcry

Speaking to The TRADE, Daniel Labovitz, former head of regulatory policy at the NYSE and current chief executive of GIX agrees, suggesting that though the market has been focused on commoditising trading faster and cheaper, there is a potential for this to affect the quality of execution, in particular when trading is atomised and one is trying to move a large position.

He further asserts that there is something to be said for a bespoke approach to trading: “It’s the reason that people like to make their own lattes instead of getting it out of a machine, because it tastes better if you can get exactly what you want.”

Strength in diversity, amid volatility

There is the undeniable importance of human presence in times of increased volatility – well documented across the industry. As Graham Sorrell, managing director and head of EMEA and APAC equity, currency and derivatives trading at State Street Global Advisors, previously put it, we are a long way from the stage where the only role of the human is to feed the dog that keeps the human from touching the machine.

With the increasing prevalence of macro-economic divergences, human intervention across the lifecycle of trading remains an important element as even highly developed systems continue to demonstrate gaps when detecting disruptions.

“Human involvement in the kind of market-making that takes place there is important because of those instances when things get out of control. You need the ability for people to react and to hit the brakes and slow things down for a second,” says Dolan, adding: “Now, they’re monitoring everything that’s going on with electronics. So that if something happens, it can be sorted off floor. However, I think that there’s still a reason that the NYC has found value in having those folks down on the floor doing what they do.” 

Taking the flash crash of 2010 as an example, Labovitz highlights how the circumstances around how the events unfolded demonstrated a key difference between NASDAQ and NYSE listed stocks – where electronically traded NASDAQ stocks tended to drop faster and farther than the NYSE listed stocks, with the difference being human intervention.

“A computer goes with a stimulus-response – you poke it, and it does something – with the flash crash, it was the humans on the floor thinking, ‘there has to be a glitch somewhere,’ and responding, while the computers were just repeatedly stub quoting. So it kept trading down, down, down, whereas the human brain with all the context says, ‘This doesn’t seem right’ or ‘I think there’s more to this story’. There’s an intelligence and an advantage to being on the floor […] There is a value to the aggregation of people in a place to trade, it creates better markets.”

Sharing his own first-hand experience of crashes whilst working for the NYSE, Dolan recalls: “I’ll never forget it because I was across the road in our office, talking to our CEO and the market was down 300 points and by the time I walked across the street and got onto the floor, the market was down 800 points. That was about five minutes. So, what was interesting was that you weren’t quite sure what was happening, what was going on, what was causing this and over the next 15 minutes, the market dropped down to 1,200 points. 

“We reacted – we stood there as market makers and bought when nobody else wanted to buy, and kind of put ourselves in harm’s way to facilitate the market and help the stocks gravitate to a point where the public wanted to trade again.”

Read more: Lessons learned from Flash Boys

The overarching benefit therefore of this reactive component and demonstrably valuable aspect of open outcry – human oversight – is the tangible means of diversification. Speaking to The TRADE, Sylvain Thieullent, chief executive at Horizon Software, explains: “In terms of open outcry as a strategy, it would be counter-intuitive to see it come back full-steam to what it looked like back in the 80s for example, but for best execution it’s useful to have multiple tools and choices available and maybe then use the right one for a specific trade.

“For example, for what we call market sentiment, there is nothing better than open outcry to detect what the sentiment of the market is, so it does make sense that in some specific market conditions specifically the value is clear.”

This perspective on the value-add of live trading floors is in stark contrast with CME Group’s decision to completely shutter the open outcry practice across its exchanges back in 2021. 

The group confirmed on 5 May 2021 it would not re-open the open outcry trading pits following their closure in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, while contrastingly, Cboe opened a new trading floor in June 2022, having also closed due to COVID-19 related reasons in March 2020.

The exchange at the time highlighted client demand for additional floor-based traders as the driving factor behind the decision.

“COVID-19 required us to configure the trading floor to allow for six feet of separation between traders. Our previous floor couldn’t accommodate everyone on that basis.  So, on June 6 2022, when we opened our brand-new shiny state-of-the-art trading floor, it was really well received. It has a very attractive and efficient design which appeals to traders,” Montesano tells The TRADE. 

He added that based on what the company is seeing currently in terms of real data, the future looks bright in the space. Cboe’s proprietary product suite set several volume records in 2023, including SPX ADV of approximately 2,900,000 and VIX ADV of 743,000, with around 23% and 45% of those volumes taking place on the floor, respectively, The TRADE understands.

It was back in December 2022 that Cboe further expanded its floor having previously asserted that physical trading would remain open “as long as investors wanted them”. 

Montesano reaffirmed this to The TRADE: “Cboe will continue to operate a trading floor as long as our customers find utility in that, and in the hybrid market model we have. So far, that is the case. We do run a very robust trading floor, along with the fully electronic market, because our customers are telling us they still find tremendous utility in having the floor […] Our busiest open outcry pit is our S&P 500 options pit, the SPX pit and we now have more Market-Makers in that pit than we did prior to COVID-19.”

Market colour

Linked to the ability to account for anomalies through a physical, human presence, is the so-called ‘colour’ added by outcry trading and the ability to witness and perceive market sentiment first hand.

Dolan asserts that the tone and feeling of the floor was a key aspect: “I could tell when there were certain news items throughout my career down on the floor because there was a sense, a buzz in the air indicating it. For example, if the inflation number was a little bit lower and the market’s ripping upward because everybody thinks the Fed’s going to pause on interest rates, it’s a dynamic feeling.

“You could sense either the downside and the fear of what was going on in bad situations, or the euphoria on the upside when the floor got louder and busier. That was the fun part of the floor because you could sense that something was happening.”

Empirically, this equates to brokers providing this colour to their clients, informing customers in real-time what they are perceiving, and importantly, proactively looking out for these indicators.

As Montesano explains: “Another factor in going via the floor is that brokers can provide market colour and inform their customers in real-time what else they see going on in the pit. For example, they can make their customers aware of other large orders being executed in related or opposing series. That perceived colour is a value add. 

“We know of several brand-new firms, including some from overseas, and some that can quote electronically but also wanted a floor presence because they saw the vibrancy of it. In addition, some of the existing firms that have had a pit presence have expanded their presence. We’ve even had more brokerage groups come into the business as well.”

Read more: First ever female traders share experiences of the London trading floor

Elsewhere, speaking to the prevalence of open outcry in the US compared to Europe, there is a marked difference in approaches. While there remains today several open outcry exchanges on one side of the Atlantic, The London Metal Exchange (LME) is the last remaining in Europe. 

Thieullent suggests that it was a question of different recipes for different cultures: “[…] These days there is definitely a question around liquidity in Europe, where re-emergence of open outcry being a viable solution for more liquidity is more of a question. It’s a tool which has been lost in some ways in European culture, and there is a real challenge with regard to the number of liquidity pools and the overall liquidity of the market available which makes the potential slice for open outcry very small or very irregular.” 

However, on the other side of this is potential for evolution and enough space in the market to consider alternatives: “Obviously people agree that without e-trading, the market could have never survived the COVID-19 pandemic, if it was all physical trading. All that is absolutely true. But in the same breath, everyone was completely convinced that remote working was the future – completely – but then two years later we’re back and the office is once again valued. The winds have changed direction which is interesting,” says Thieullent.

Though electronic trading accounts – understandably and irrevocably – for the bulk of the market’s activity, this aspect of trading life, which does still prevail, is therefore perhaps not merely a nostalgic hark back as many are quick to declare. Rather, open outcry can justly be considered an extra, valuable, facet of an ever-moving and complex industry.

As Labovitz suggests: “Trading floors represent a different way of doing things, not worse, not an inferior way. A different way of doing it – there’s value in that.”

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Specifically, the action will address the controls employed by EU investment firms using algo trading techniques, with the CSA carried out during in the course of 2024, the bodies confirmed.

Speaking to The TRADE, Chris McConville, global head of execution services and trading at Kepler’s KCx, stressed the importance of these controls across the market: “At KCx, we are passionate about pre-trade controls. This isn’t just because they are a requirement of RTS 6, but because they play a key part in our strategy to protect our customers.

“Some of the pre-trade controls we implement may never be noticed by our clients, and that’s exactly how it should be. We are in the business of abstracting away complexity and providing our clients with solutions they love.” 

Through accurate pre-trade controls, investment firms can limit and prevent sending erroneous orders to trading venues.

The CSA is set to assess a range of factors when it comes to pre-trade controls, including: the use of hard and soft blocks in their design, the calibration methodology, the establishment of limits for credit and risk as well as assessing their interaction with the controls, the monitoring and implementation of pre-trade controls in cases of outsourced trading to third countries, and examining governance frameworks.

The move follows the flash crash of 2 May 2022, with the regulators paying special attention to the implementation of pre-trade controls in the EU, having gathered evidence through questionnaires submitted to a sample of EU investment firms. This launch of the CSA follows this step, as ESMA and NCAs look to find more detailed insights on how firms are using pre-trade controls across the EU. 

The 2022 European stock market crash was the latest example of what Michael Lewis expounded in ‘The Flash Boys’, wherein he claimed that “people no longer are responsible for what happens in the market because computers make all the decisions”. Regulators are clearly making strides to combat this in the algorithmic trading sphere where some of the fastest large volume orders threaten instability. 

Sylvain Thieullent, chief executive at Horizon Software, told The TRADE: “With the constant evolution of algorithmic trading, it’s essential that effective oversight is maintained. Pre-trade controls (PTCs) are a key ingredient for an execution desk to perform with business excellence and, ultimately, achieve best execution. Their capabilities to cancel or block orders that have the potential of overstepping an investment firm’s risk threshold are significant, alongside their role in preventing excessively large orders that could have substantial impact on the wider market.

“As such, PTCs demand necessary attention from regulatory bodies. ESMA, through its collaboration with NCAs, is correct to look more closely at their application.” 

Read more: Lessons learned from Flash Boys

According to the regulators, the CSA initiative, as well as the related sharing of practices across NCAs “aim [to ensure] consistent application of EU rules, helping to promote stable and orderly markets in line with ESMA’s objectives”. ESMA and NCAs also reminded the market in its most recent announcement of the established rules which govern the use of pre-trade controls as set out in Mifid II – CDR 2017/589 (RTS 6). 

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Sylvain Thieullent

Did anyone else get a funny sense of déjà vu when the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) suddenly cancelled trades after “technical glitches” with its opening auction triggered wild price swings in the likes of McDonald’s and ExxonMobil? From Knight Capital in 2012 to Euronext in 2021, over the past decade, all kinds of “glitches” have occurred and in every single case, investors have only been able to respond based on what the exchanges have been willing to communicate.

Last month’s NYSE incident was no different – but what can investors do with such limited insight? Far from being the first time, the incident has been put down to a “human mistake”. Reports claim that the system connecting to the Chicago-based backup data centre, which should be manually turned on and off when the market opens and closes, was not. As a consequence, the backup system was left running, and at 9:30am the next morning, the system skipped the day’s opening auctions that set prices and caused a brief meltdown.

Read More – NYSE claims technical glitch for early trading issues

It is clear that glitches are a recurring nightmare for exchanges – propagating challenges from the regulators, members and, ultimately, overall trust in the market. When a NYSE type incident occurs, there is the inevitable knee-jerk reaction from global regulators to better monitor future situations to the extent that it affects trade reporting obligations and issues of wider market integrity. Then there is the “reviewing existing processes” period to understand in greater detail what went wrong, before then enforcing measures to reduce the risk of similar events happening in the future. The issue is that there are rules already in place alongside a willingness on behalf of the exchange community to abide by them, so it is hard to see what the subsequent “review” processes will achieve. The truth is that no matter how many reviews take place, they are not preventing technical glitches from occurring. The question is, why do they keep happening? After all these glitches should, in theory, be taking place far less frequently due to the significant industry wide technological advancements that have taken place.

The answer may be that humans cannot keep up with the rate at which technology is advancing. The infrastructure underpinning the global capital markets is so complex that it is becoming unmanageable to the human brain. Our best hope may be that computers eventually will become smart enough to maintain themselves. What that means is that when one thing fails, or one piece of information fails, it can affect hundreds, thousands or millions of other pieces of equipment. As we have seen in the case of the NYSE, it is not as easy as flipping a switch to get things up and operational again.

The focus must be on upgrading existing technology to be better prepared for the next time something like this happens. Technology does exist to assist in these circumstances and should be deployed alongside market practices driven by rules defined by the regulator. While we must accept that technology will break from time to time, it can be upgraded and made to work in order to reduce the number of exchange outages happening. Backups, automated alerts, and other functionalities are prevalent across other sectors to keep system administrators apprised. So why is this not the case for exchanges with an equity market capitalisation upwards of 20 trillion dollars?

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On both sides of the channel, it was presumed that following the ongoing discussions being held across the globe, the practice was set to have some form of limitation or ban put onto it.

However, news this week suggests regulators in the US have come down on the side of those firms that champion the practice of paying a fee in exchange for brokers to channel their retail flow to them instead of to other firms or to trading venues.

First reported in Bloomberg, sources with knowledge of the matter have suggested that the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) is no longer planning to implement a ban on PFOF following months of deliberation. The SEC’s final stance is expected to be published in the coming months.

Bloomberg’s sources reported that changes to the regime that make it less profitable were still on the table. Included in these, were the SEC moving to lower access fees charged to brokers by exchanges in a bid to encourage more volumes onto them, increased transparency around brokers disclosing how much trading with them costs and changes around the rebate system.

Among other changes put forward by the SEC and chair Gary Gensler in a recent proposal  to level the retail playing field are changes to tick sizes and a potential auction system for order-by-order competition.

“Gensler is favouring a scorched earth approach to make PFOF less profitable instead of an outright ban,” said one source familiar with the matter. “However, he has not taken account of the collateral damage this approach will have. An auction system for example would remove the requirement for a wholesaler to fill every order.”

Hot and cold

Gensler set his sights on PFOF last year, calling for recommendations on how the SEC could mitigate conflicts with respect to the practice and rebates. PFOF has proved a contentious topic for many who claim that it encourages brokers to channel their flow to the market maker with the highest bid as opposed to the one with the best execution.

However, those in support of PFOF attribute commission free trading to the practice. It should also be noted that brokers that do charge PFOF set a flat rate that is charged consistently across wholesalers and market makers argue this supports merit-based allocation, according to 606 disclosures. An academic paper published in August by the University of California concluded that PFOF has no apparent impact on price discovery.

Key players to dominate this space include Citadel Securities which forked out $2.6 billion for PFOF in 2020 and 2021, and Susquehanna (G1X global execution brokers), which spent a $1.5 billion and Virtu which spent $654 million in the same period, according to 606 reports.

A similar debate around a potential ban on PFOF has been taking place in Europe, however, regulators on this side of the pond look more likely to be taking a more restrictive stance. Suggested in a Capital Markets Union (CMU) update in November, regulators announced their proposed intentions to prohibit payment for order flow for “high-frequency traders organised as SIs”. Under the proposed changes, venues would instead have to earn retail order flow by publishing competitive pre-trade quotes.

This stance was re-affirmed in July when European regulators confirmed in their latest draft report for Mifid II amendments that they were planning to move ahead with a ban despite rumours they could be changing their tune.

According to author of the report, senior EU lawmaker and Polish MEP Danuta Hübner’s concerns over PFOF were symptomatic of a wider problem across the EU of regulators interpreting rules differently and that “the rapporteur maintains the initial proposal” from the European Commission to ban the practice.

The culprit for the diverging approaches is likely to be transparency. With no consolidated tape to be implemented yet in the fragmented European markets, retail investors have no ability to compare prices or fils like the system available to those trading in the US.

“Europe and US market structure is inherently different – hence opposing stances on payment for order flow,” chief executive officer at Horizon Software, Sylvain Thieullent, told The TRADE.

“The reality of today’s highly competitive, regulated and global environment means financial institutions must handle most of their order volume automatically, while still having the ability to work larger orders with care where required. At the same time, they also need to be continuously refining their market making approach to reflect technical advancements across both Europe and the US.”

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The project will primarily focus on optimal execution, measurement and control of liquidity risk.

In addition, the study aims to establish a way to beat the benchmark of an execution algo through modelling order books by studying the market microstructure; using stochastic control to determine high frequency execution strategies in these models; and to develop high-frequency learning models to optimise strategies.

Yadh Hafsi will lead the three-year research project, receiving supervision from Horizon’s CTO, Olivier Masdebrieu and two professors from Paris-Saclay, Vathana Ly Vath and Etienne Chevalier.

“I believe that my study will help minimise the execution costs of different high-frequency trading strategies and will bring added value to Horizon’s technological platform,” said Hafsi.

The goal of this research is to apply the concept of stochastic control theory to address operational execution issues in financial markets using artificial intelligence.

“We are happy and excited about this research collaboration with Horizon which, we hope, will lead to a better understanding of this challenging liquidity risk modelling and optimal execution problems,” said Ly Vath and Chevalier.

“We also believe that this study will fruitfully assist Horizon in further developing innovative trading strategies for its clients.”

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Outset Global appointed Peter Sellers as a new managing director in its outsourced trading group. He joins the firm in a US-based but European focused role after most recently serving as head of European outsourced trading at JonesTrading for nearly three years. Prior to JonesTrading, Sellers spent four and a half years as head of global equity trading at Caxton Associates and two years at Adams Hill Partners as head of international trading.

The chief architect of UBS’ UK-regulated dark multilateral trading facility (MTF), Jean-Philippe Minet, left the firm after 12 years, according to a post on social media. Minet first joined in 2010 with a mandate to build and launch the firm‘s MTF, as well as to obtain the relevant regulatory approvals and to create all MTF policies, procedures and client-facing documentation. Prior to UBS, Minet spent a brief period as a monitoring consultant with Liquidnet. At the time of publication, Minet has not revealed where he will be moving to next.

State Street has moved to expand its remit in electronic equities and portfolio solutions with the addition of four new hires. Among them is a vice president of electronic equities, Eric Weiner, who joins the firm having previously served as a sales trader at Janney Montgomery Scott and Lazard Capital Markets, and as an equity trader at BTIG. Joining in an electronic equities role is Ariana Leong, who has been appointed as a product specialist after serving for two decades in a hybrid sales trading role at Instinet. Lastly, in a bid to expand its portfolio solutions remit, State Street appointed Joe Martinez and Sarah Kirschbaum as senior sales managers.

Former Morgan Stanley electronic trading executive, Olivier Masdebrieu, joined Paris-based Horizon Software to lead its technology strategy. He joins the business as the chief technology officer (CTO) from rival trading systems vendor Itiviti. Prior to joining Itiviti, Masdebrieu spent over 23 years at Morgan Stanley across various roles.

Elsewhere, Citi appointed Nadine Readie as head of Execution to Custody (E2C), EMEA, the unit which provides clients global execution, settlement and custody services through a single portal. Readie brings a wealth of experience to the role, having started her career in financial services back in 2002. She has held senior roles at UBS, Deutsche Bank and HSBC Securities, and joins the business from Liquidnet where she has served for over eight years – most recently as EMEA & APAC head of trade services (operations).

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Olivier Masdebrieu joins Horizon as the chief technology officer (CTO) from rival trading systems vendor Itiviti.

Prior to joining Itiviti, Masdebrieu spent over 23 years at Morgan Stanley across various roles including global head of index and structured product electronic trading in London and Hong Kong and global lead of program sales and trading renovation.

In his new role he will be responsible for driving Horizon’s technology strategy including continuing the development of its platform.

“Over the past few years, Horizon has achieved a major milestone and has become a leader in the financial market by bringing together agency and principal trading functions under one single platform,” said Masdebrieu. “I’m looking forward to helping Horizon in its next phase of growth.”

His appointment follows several investments by Horizon to grow its offering: including the addition of market making and agency trading on one platform in November and the expansion of its crypto trading platform to include crypto exchange BINANCE in its list of gateways.

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The addition will allow its clients, notably hedge funds, to trade spot and futures on cryptocurrencies. Because crypto trading takes place 24/7, Horizon has adapted its trading platforms to these requirements, updating its algo framework and Principal Trading features to enable both long and short strategies as well as arbitrage strategies.

BINANCE is the latest exchange to connect with Horizon, joining players including Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp and Bittrex.

 “Cryptocurrency market capitalization reached close to $3 trillion USD at its peak in November 2021,” said Vincent Dumontoy, Horizon’s global head of product management. “We believe cryptocurrencies are here to stay as market participants use them to diversify their portfolios and to perform transactions on-chain.

“As a cross-asset trading platform, cryptocurrencies are an integral part of Horizon’s strategy. We’re already connected to main cryptocurrency exchanges and offering full scope of Principal Trading strategies on crypto cash and futures through market making and algo trading.”

 In 2022, Horizon plans to extend its Principal Trading scope to options on Deribit, while its Agency Trading modules will also handle 10^-9 quantity precision to be able to execute crypto client orders.

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Horizon, which was originally design for market making and algo trading services, now looks at improving agency trading by leveraging its expertise in latency, scalability and algo and execution strategies to banks and brokers.

By providing functionalities in high touch, DMA, DSA and global order routing for equity and global derivatives, Horizon allows banks and institutional brokers to address the trading challenges associated with today and the future.

Clients that currently use Horizon for their market making are now expanding towards client order flow and execution through one single platform. This will allow them to optimise their running cost and implement cross business logic such as internalisation or credit risk book.

“In today’s highly competitive and regulated environment, financial institutions must handle most of their order volume automatically, while still having the ability to work larger orders with care where required. At the same time, they also need to be continuously refining their market making approach to reflect technical advancements,” said Sylvain Thieullent, chief executive of Horizon Software.

“Our highly automated hybrid agency and market making trading platform scales across asset classes and geographies to provide high touch and DMA functionality required to meet demands for high quality service from clients.”

Over the last year, Horizon has seen its platform deployed by different firms. In July, Santander Bank Polska deployed Horizon’s algo platform for market making.

In addition, Instanbul-based broker Gedik Investment expanded its partnership with Horizon to deploy its platform for equities execution.

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Santander Bank Polska has partnered with trading technology provider Horizon Software to deploy its market making platform on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE).

The institution originally teamed up with Horizon in 2019 for market making across equities and derivatives, with the new deployment extending that to cover equities, equity futures, and index futures.

The Horizon electronic algorithmic trading technology connects participants directly to over 80 exchanges globally and allows clients to create, test and implement automated trading strategies in real-time. 

“Horizon has been carefully selected amid multiple electronic trading vendors in the region after close examination,” said Marcin Jurkowski, manager of strategy and development department at Santander Bank Polska.

“This leading technology provider has not failed us in delivering the best service, exceeding our expectations. At Santander Bank, we are very proud of what this collaboration has resulted in, and we believe that the investment will yield significant trading benefits.” 

This is the second deployment initiative of Horizon technology recently after Istanbul-based broker Gedik Investment also expanded its partnership with the trading technology provider to deploy its platform for equities execution. 

“This close collaboration proves our commitment to developing the next generation of sophisticated platforms, providing our clients who trade on WSE with a single cross-asset, algo-powered platform for both principal and agency trading,” added Damien Jenner, head of EMEA sales at Horizon Software.

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