Emily Portney

The agreement will see AIA implement BlackRock’s end-to-end investment management and operations platform Aladdin, alongside BNY’s specialised investment operations and data management services technology – together providing AIA with an end-to-end solution with enhanced data and analytics capability.

Emily Portney, global head of asset servicing at BNY, said: “We are proud to support AIA in enhancing their investment platform with a new data-driven operating model that will deliver critical insights, elevate the client experience and improve operational efficiency. We are also excited to continue our ongoing collaborative work with BlackRock, to deliver best-in-class solutions for our mutual clients.” 

Headquartered in Hong Kong, AIA Group has a presence in 18 markets across Asia – and has total assets of $286 billion as of 31 December 2023.

Read more: BNY Mellon and BlackRock sign alliance to create front-to-back office data service

Mark Konyn, AIA Group chief investment officer, said, “This strategic collaboration brings our long-term investment programme together with an enhanced ability to deliver industry-leading investment solutions and provide positive, sustainable outcomes for our stakeholders. 

“As we work with BlackRock and BNY to transform our platform, AIA will continue managing our growing investment portfolio at greater scale to meet our performance, risk management and sustainable investment goals. With the solutions we are implementing, AIA will gain a single, consistent, and timely view across all asset classes allowing us to make even more informed investments across complex market environments.”    

BNY and BlackRock first agreed a strategic partnership back in 2019, with a view to providing mutual clients with real-time data insights through the investment lifecycle. The partnership was then extended in 2021 to give clients greater freedom of choice around middle-office services. 

Commenting on the new mandate, Rob Goldstein, chief operating officer at BlackRock, said: “We are thrilled to engage with AIA to deliver the breadth of Aladdin across AIA’s whole portfolio, including public and private assets, along with the ability to support insurance-specific needs. We look forward to working with BNY to deliver a seamless experience to AIA.”

BlackRock’s Aladdin collected the Outstanding Trading Technology Provider award at The TRADE’s 2023 Leaders in Trading awards in London last November. This year’s event is set to take place on 7 November at the Savoy Hotel, more details here.

The post BNY and BlackRock collaborate on front-to-back mandate with AIA appeared first on The TRADE.

The whole debacle was sparked by CLS’s reveal last month that it would not be moving its cut-off due to feedback from its members – a decision which surprised and disappointed some – while pointing out that custodians would still be able to tweak their own internal deadlines. The onus is now on these providers to alleviate any workflow issues that may arise for buy-side firms looking to trade around the time of the cut offs – of which there are many.

The result? The buy-side feels its voice hasn’t been heard when looking for support, custodians feel the attention was shifted to their internal cut-offs at the eleventh hour, and CLS is likely feeling stuck in the middle with its hands tied by its sell-side members.

While fingers of blame are being pointed in each direction, the bottom line is asset managers are now facing operational challenges, the notion of pre-funding trades and balancing settlement security with best execution obligations. The idea that more trades might be settled bilaterally also increases the counterparty risk that regulators have been looking to avoid across the industry.

Central to all of this, CLS, the operator of the market’s largest multi-currency settlement system, also probably harbours an element of frustration itself given that an equities problem sprung on this industry by regulators has spilled over into its FX world. And, that it can’t simply make adjustments without due consideration of its membership and the impact on them.

However, it’s difficult not to appreciate the predicament for the buy-side, who now face a last-minute scramble to adjust their operations and trading to avoid prefunding, bilateral settlement and moving team members to the US.

“[We’re] not surprised but disappointed at the way the buy-side concerns appear to have been trivialised,” Adam Conn, head of trading at Baillie Gifford, tells The TRADE.

“The core concern is that if a spot FX trade cannot be cleared through CLS it will need to be settled bilaterally with the FX bank we trade with thus increasing counterparty and operational risk. At this stage of the cycle, it’s more the operational risk but in times of stress that counterparty risk could be just as important. Settling trades gross operationally carries a higher degree of risk than a payment versus payment netting platform which, in my opinion, is really the whole purpose of CLS.”

Baillie Gifford is one of a handful of firms that have opted to open a new trading desk in New York on the back of the US’ move to T+1.

Background of the decision

When the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that the US would move to T+1 settlement for equities in February 2023, a 15-month countdown for preparation began. However, what the regulator probably failed to account for was the knock-on effect outside of the US, and on adjacent processes – securities lending, corporate actions and FX to name a few.

What CLS made clear from the outset was that it would not change its cut-off ahead of the T+1 implementation on 28 May, however, it had reportedly been open with the industry that it would explore a change in its 00.00 CET (6pm ET) deadline – considering 30-, 60- and 90-minute extensions – and promised an update around the end of Q1 2024.

When that update came – with a refusal to budge – the US shift to T+1 was just seven weeks away. CLS concluded that the development to accommodate a move in CLS’s initial pay-in schedule – with a deadline of 00.00 CET – would take “considerable time to implement”. 

Global Custodian and The TRADE understand that for some of the larger members, those system developments, and related approvals, could theoretically take between nine and 12 months to roll out. 

Either way, in its internal survey, over 40% of CLS settlement members – representing around 50% of CLS Settlement’s $6.5 trillion average daily value (ADV) – declared that system development may be needed, the infrastructure provider said. 

For reference, CLS has 76 settlement members, as of December 2023, with 60 of those based outside of the US, Canada or Mexico. 

Why it took 14 months to conclude the survey and come to the decision has become a bugbear for custodians and the buy-side. Of the handful of large US asset servicers we spoke to, many of them stopped short of saying CLS threw them under the bus, however they did feel “the ball was put in our court” – as one source put it.

“CLS essentially implied that custodians could absorb the credit risk of confirming settlement through CLS without being able to appropriately check source of funding,” said another.

Baillie Gifford’s Conn added: “If they set about doing this when T+1 was first announced they would have had time, but they chose not to. The SEC chair has publicly spoken about how T+1 will push infrastructure providers to enhance their service. I’m not seeing it yet. One of the big benefits of T+1 was the argument that it will reduce risk but what we feel is happening is a transfer of risk from proprietary trading strategies and retail brokers to asset managers and their clients. That cannot be seen to be a positive outcome.”

Attention turns to the custodians

Following the reveal of the CLS member survey results, attention has turned to custodian deadlines which fall before the CLS cut-off. It appears a portion of asset managers were unaware these were two different things, given their interaction was with the broker-dealers who were the members of CLS, as opposed to them being direct members themselves.

Not all custodians felt frustration with CLS however, as one source said “what were CLS supposed to do? There are times you could move to which could be totally redundant because there isn’t any liquidity in the market. If liquidity starts to emerge you could move it, but you can’t put the cart before the horse.”

Global Custodian understands from multiple sources that a handful of custodians are moving their deadlines, with those close to the matter referencing ‘positive moves’ on that front. BNY Mellon, for example, has confirmed publicly that it is adding an extra hour for clients to get their CLS-eligible trade instructions to the bank to increase the chances of those trades making the CLS deadline.

In addition, it is also allowing extra time for FX trade instructions it is executing on behalf of clients to come in for same-day settlement, on trades denominated in the Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Singapore dollar and Japanese yen.

Ryan Cuthbertson, global head of custody services, BNY Mellon, told Global Custodian: “BNY Mellon has been advocating for clients to assess their operating models from execution, through to settlement, this includes FX and funding, since the announcement of T+1.

“We are not surprised by the timing of these issues coming to light, instead we see this as the market reacting to final considerations relative to T+1 that participants of financial markets may have to date believed would be ‘swept up’ in custodians processing. We are actually seeing a spike in interest with regards to FX and funding solutions from clients as they come to the realisation that usage of custodians’ balance sheet in the form of end of day credit is not free and is not guaranteed.”

Many other custodians are tweaking their own deadlines as well but have been less public. Global Custodian knows of one custodian moving its cut-off to 5.45pm ET and one to 5.30pm ET. This is also a confusing process however, with some clients allegedly receiving preferential treatment. Long term this could become a contributing factor to further consolidation of smaller buy-side players across the street, emboldening a trend already seen in recent years.

“Custodians are very good at is picking clients off one by one,” says one source speaking on the condition of anonymity. “At the end of the day, it’s a massive spectrum. So, you can already ensure that if BlackRock reaches out to their custodian they would say ‘right, okay, you want it 30 seconds before the settlement cut off – yeah, we’ll live with that’. It’s not been a unilateral broadcast – they will speak to clients one-by-one-by-one and see how they can divide and conquer.”

In truth, it’s probably easier for the asset management clients of custodians to direct their frustration towards CLS – an infrastructure they don’t deal directly with – but CLS has invested in reaching out on an educational front where possible throughout the past 15 months. Its processes, functions and benefits are arguably clearer to the market than ever, while some custodians feel they are closer to the organisation following the lengthy stretch of change.

When asked why not all custodians had moved, one source put it down to “complex funding constraints, high levels of non-standard instructions, or a combination of both”. However, in the past few weeks, the phrase being thrown around plenty is that there are “positive movements” being made by a number of providers. Ultimately, the move could end up reshaping the competitive landscape, as buy-side firms look to interact more with those that have accommodated them during the shift and less with those that haven’t.

Conn explains: “Our goal is to get everything in CLS before that cut-off. Some of the custodian banks that our clients contract with have been very obliging and some others less so in terms of moving their own cut offs before the CLS deadline. I’m certain that a banks’ ability to be operationally sound will definitely have an impact on where we choose to trade going forward. 

“What we and others will be speaking to custodian banks about is their ability to move their own cut off as close to – the CLS cut-off at 6:00 PM ET. The best practise we’ve seen from custodian banks has been to move their cut off time to 5:45 PM ET. It might be too simplistic but if some custodians can do it, I struggle to understand why others cannot.” 

Ultimately, this keeps coming back to increased costs, risk and operational complexities for the buy-side. One of the biggest talking points for asset managers and their custodians is liquidity.

Moving the deadlines is one thing, but they have to coincide with where the liquidity is, otherwise moving the cut-off is a moot point. Moving to 4pm ET isn’t going to make much difference, but every minute counts the nearer you move to 6pm ET.

Buy-side pressure

Many desks are now left with a decision – rush to get everything done within the CLS window or execute outside of it and chance taking on undue risk. If trades head into the US close, asset managers could be left with a tiny window to get an FX trade generated and executed. With additional demand caused by time pressure, there is also the potential for traders to face wider spreads on larger size FX risk at the end of the day.

Once such solution to said problem could be simultaneous execution of equity and currency trades – which are usually done after the fact – to alleviate time pressure.

“We used to trade FX a little bit later and wait until equity trades were confirmed but now we’re speeding it up to do our FX trading at the time of execution which is going to be very helpful for us so we can get those trades funded ahead of the cut off,” Blair Connelly, director, cash and FX management at T. Rowe Price, tells The TRADE. “That’s really what we’ve been focused on, just being proactive and trying to create our own solution internally instead of relying on third parties.”

However, this could leave trading desks subject to increased risk of executing FX trades against unconfirmed or unmatched equity trades.

Among the most central challenges for the foreign exchange market caused by the shift to T+1 is its impact on liquidity and the potential for a shortened settlement window to make the market less attractive to source FX.

Thanks to the UK/EU and US time difference, the shortened settlement timeframe has been flagged by traders as likely to create a “golden hour” of liquidity at 5 pm Eastern Time – otherwise known as midnight in the UK. The result of this, if no other solution emerges, means that for many the prospect of moving FX desks to the US will become a reality.

The prospect of divergence is also still very much on everyone’s minds. While the US shift is imminent, the UK and Europe have opted for a more “wait and see what happens” methodology, leaving trading desks to juggle differing regimes.

With the European market as complex as it currently is, it’s likely the road to implementing T+1 will be a long one. If the EU and the UK don’t follow suit, markets could see a variety of nuances to navigate including in some areas such as ETFs and paper share certificates staying on T+2.

A not insignificant 1%

Pressure ramped up even further on CLS last month when the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) released a report estimating that roughly 40% of daily FX flows – representing between $50-70 billion – will no longer be able to settle through the CLS platform, resulting in increased risks.

While this headline stat caught a lot of attention, digging deeper into the report showed that it was actually the inability to meet internal custodian deadlines – based on their trading patterns and relationships – that will mean that 40% of daily FX flows will no longer be able to settle through the CLS platform. 

CLS has said its own research aligned with that of EFAMA’s but stressed that the 40% figure only related to the 1% of CLSSettlement ADV which it believes could be impacted by the move to T+1 and could settle outside of CLS.

So taking holistic view, the impact seems minimal, but if you’re caught up in that not-insignificant percentage which still accounts for tens of billions of dollars, the whole saga has been a point of frustration.

“If they’d [CLS] have put the figure in dollar value it might have been slightly more headline worthy,” says Conn. “In the EFAMA report, US$65 billion upwards a day could potentially settle outside of CLS. That’s a lot of money sitting outside of a payment versus payment network.”

“One percent might not sound like a lot but in notional value it’s probably pretty significant,” adds Connelly. “Depending on somebody’s flow there could be some very big and impactful days, but I think from a market level they’re probably right it’s probably not that impactful. It’s going to have an impact on certain people on certain days.   

“I don’t feel a backlash from our perspective. We understand that the members are the ones that drive the agenda for CLS. They’re the ones that are going to have to make the technology change and the ones who are going to have to spend. They’re valued trading partners of ours so I can certainly understand that there probably is a backlash but from our perspective, I don’t feel that backlash. We’re understanding of it.  

“In 6-12 months, there will be a lot of telling to see who’s right who’s wrong. In terms of the people that think CLS are wrong, when the data comes through that’ll be interesting and I think it’ll be rehashed.”

While the deadline remains firm, CLS has said it will monitor the impact of the shift to T+1 and make assessments on the impact in both June and September, in what it calls more of a “wait and see” approach through “temperature checks”, Lisa Danino-Lewis, chief growth officer at CLS told Global Custodian at the time of the member survey announcement.

“It’s difficult to ascertain exactly what might be related to T+1, because we don’t have that level of detail, but we can look around certain parameters. If we found that  volumes and values stay exactly the same, then we can safely assume that the impact has been negligible. Obviously, if impacted volumes are much higher than expected we’ll reassess it sooner.”

The path forward

In lieu of a change at this point, CLS is reminding members that they can still submit their trades to CLSSettlement up until 06:30 CET for settlement that day. It’s a message they will be reminding the market of for a long time.

“We can’t move if our members can’t move, but there’s nothing that precludes them entering those trades. Within CLSSettlement, members can submit trade instructions up to 6.30am CET on the day of value. It’s really down to each individual member to agree with their clients.”

In addition, CLS highlights that “for same-day instructions that cannot settle within CLS due to custodian cut-off times CLSNet, CLS’s automated and standardised bilateral netting calculation service, can help to reduce funding obligations and the number of payments required by calculating net payment obligations that facilitate payment netting”.

Regardless of who is to blame an equities problem has spilt over into the FX world. Somehow custodians and CLS have ended up between a rock and a hard place, which is fine – unless you’re a matter of days away from one of the largest structural changes in the history of the financial markets.

The post Inside the FX cut-off conundrum sparking animosity between the buy-side, CLS and custodians as T+1 looms appeared first on The TRADE.

I would say that it is largely a c-suite level decision, however, there has been a taboo associated with the idea of outsourcing where people think it equates to eliminating your trading team completely, but I think now we’ve moved past that and it’s not so much an opinion we’re seeing.

In terms of who makes that decision of course it is down to the people who are motivated by, and tasked with, looking at overall operating model transformation and cost efficiency – which are generally COO’s and CFO’s.

Those individuals seek experts in their partners and we are very much engaged with CIOs as well as constantly working closely with the heads of trading – the people who are really at the coal face of the complexity around trading and the investment process. 

Read more: The TRADE’s The Outsourced Trading Handbook 2023 

From our side, we have conversations with both groups across the client base. A key facet of our relationship with those looking to outsource is our connection to the brokerage community. When you have a true buy-side trading team, traders know each other very well, and so when it’s time to onboard – for either a partial or a full outsourcing – those broker connections are really critical in moving forward quickly. 

How has onboarding the first clients to BNY Mellon’s Buy-Side Trading Service gone?

We’ve been really pleased that we were able to – in quite a short time frame – establish the workflows and how we support our clients’ needs. Between trading teams, that partnership is a particularly significant component, and it takes time to build those relationships desk to desk.

When you know the expertise is so strong on both sides, you have the ability to speak the same language and create a partnership relatively quickly. Because of that, we have been able to go from start to finish and get up and running with clients in a very short period of time. 

BNY Mellon has very strong relationships with our clients, and we’re always thrilled when we get the opportunity to do more for them. These partnerships are a great opportunity to bring a newer capability to long-standing relationships.

Read more: Goldman Sachs AM set to leverage BNY Mellon’s buy-side trading solution

And this has been a great opportunity for us to prove our hypothesis that the level of complexity and the scale at which we are able to support trading in a really streamlined and straight through manner is differentiated.

Truly multi-asset and global investment strategies can be supported through our offering, and I think that that is somewhat new in this market.

How are decisions made as to the structure of the outsourced offering?

We’ve seen the gamut really: cost efficiency, looking to just get more efficient generally; more variability with costs; greater coverage of every market in every jurisdiction.

It’s based on client needs and, importantly, on taking the opportunities that they present to us. We take the time to truly understand the business and spend time looking at their trade data and transaction history so that we can pinpoint opportunities or maybe even gaps that can be filled. 

We’re proud of the data science capability that we’ve built out over the last five years or so, our ability to take large complex data sets, analyse it and produce real, meaningful results that help clients understand what the right use of our capabilities might be. 

Looking at T+1, which is causing everyone to have a fresh look at how they are managing their trading activity throughout the global cycle, we’re having some key conversations. It’s been very gratifying from our perspective to work with clients who are really forward thinking. It’s those CIO’s, or even heads of trading, who are saying ‘I want to position my institution for the next 10 to 20 years, I don’t want to be holding on to the legacy of the way things have always been done, I want to be open-minded’.

Going on a journey with a client to talk about how this could fit in among a much larger operating model transformation is a really interesting conversation.

Does a big client like Goldman outsourcing have a domino effect?

I don’t think as a standalone that is the case, we absolutely have other clients that we’re actively contracting with who are larger asset managers looking to participate in buy-side trading solutions proactively and for large portions of their trading activity.

A client like Goldman Sachs is definitely not a one off, but on the other side of that, there are many clients who are on a journey. Years ago, it was the middle-office who were contemplating outsourcing and people couldn’t even consider that you would allow somebody into your books and records in that way. However today things are different thanks to sophisticated options being readily available from trusted providers.

I think we’ll continue to see a slow chipping away at different client types but for the moment, those with more pressing situations like T+1 are motivated in a different way to solve problems imminently.

I would also mention the more traditional clients of outsourced trading, the smaller hedge funds, are also broadening their view of the potential of outsourcing – for example, looking at providers to widen the scope of trading – at BNY one can trade derivatives and fixed income, not just equities. A new wealth of opportunity.

Then, for larger hedge funds, we’ll also see a little bit of everything happening over the next 6 months, a year or two years. We can see and feel that the asset management community is responding to the number of providers, the sophistication of providers like ourselves, and of course the significance of seeing their peers make moves in this space. 

What’s next for BNY? What’s the priority? 

We continue to look to expand the footprint physically and so we’ll be adding more traders to our London office this summer and we will continue to round out the offering that we have for asset owners a little bit more holistically later this year.

The focus currently is just that, continuing to expand the size and scale of the team as our client demand grows and we’re again very fortunate to have such a senior and experienced core team in every asset class which makes it relatively easy to add on capacity as demand grows. 

Read more: BNY Mellon to provide outsourced trading solution to the buy-side

In this we’re definitely looking multi-asset, and again, we have teams that are specialists in either equities or fixed income or otherwise and we also have teams that are multi-asset trading so growth will happen across all three of those dimensions.

Currently, of course, what’s been the trend is the expansion away from just equities and so fixed income is probably the next most logical volume traded asset class in the market. But really, for us, it’s completely open.

We trade over 150 investment strategies globally across over 100 markets and fixed income is where we’re seeing people excited about the opportunity to partner for that asset class, but there’s also a lot of further interest in derivatives and other instruments.

The post BNY Mellon’s Rebecca Crowe talks outsourced trading appeared first on The TRADE.

GMT will improve client experience, increase optionality, and execution choice, as well as offering clients improved access to BNY Mellon’s global markets and execution enterprise.

“We are proud to announce a newly integrated set of markets sales and trading capabilities for clients provided by Global Markets Trading. With a global footprint, Global Markets Trading provides clients access to 45+ tailored solutions as an unconflicted provider that is known for being a transparent and trusted partner,” said BNY in a statement.

Read more: Fireside Friday with… BNY Mellon’s Geoffrey Yu

BNY Mellon’s execution offering provides clients with access to a liquidity pool which leverages the firm’s client footprint consisting of asset managers, asset owners, alternatives, banks, broker dealers and wealth clients.

The firm’s programmatic service suite allows for a wider range of automated programmatic execution solutions to be reached with real-time segregated services for currency conversions and security requirements.

In addition, the firm’s newly launched Buy-side Trading Solutions offering provides multi-asset trading services to support global portfolio implementation at scale.

“The collective power of Global Markets Trading and Buy-side Trading Solutions enables our clients to select from a unique range of execution services for the first time,” added BNY Mellon.

The post BNY Mellon combines market offerings through Global Markets Trading integration appeared first on The TRADE.

The shift to T+1 is expected to pose significant challenges for participants, with ample coverage surrounding project increases in fails rates and pressures for international participants linked to misalignment.

As a result, an anticipated impact of these challenges is increased capital constraints due to higher fail rates and operating costs.  

Funding and FX requirements are expected to be a more complicated challenge, especially for international brokers and investors operating across different settlement jurisdictions and time zones.

Read more: T+1 settlement: The seismic post-trade change impacting the trading desk

“BNY Mellon has the foresight to help clients across this challenging time in FX settlement,” said Roy Saadon, chief executive and co-founder at AccessFintech.

“Together, we can achieve T+1 settlement by collaborating as a unified ecosystem.”

BNY Mellon and AccessFintech are collaborating to address the expected challenges on the shift to T+1, providing clarity on the ‘predicted to settle’ status of securities trades.

AccessFintech’s clients will be able to instruct BNY Mellon to broker FX transactions based on these ‘predicted to settle’ insights before the end of the US trading day, helping enable the necessary liquidity for international clients trading US securities.  

“At BNY Mellon, we are laser focused on developing solutions that support our clients’ investment performance and success,” said Jason Vitale, head of global markets trading at BNY Mellon.

“Our collaboration with AccessFintech will provide clients the ability to leverage our recently launched Universal FX platform to fund their T+1 settlement activity in an efficient and transparent manner.”   

The post AccessFintech and BNY Mellon collaborate to tackle expected FX workflow challenges linked to T+1 appeared first on The TRADE.

The two firms said the integration comes off the back of growing demand from clients seeking to expand their BNY Mellon triparty usage beyond uncleared margin into repo financing, helping them to capture more benefits from being on the collateral platform.   

“This integration with GLMX re-enforces our commitment to enhance the user experience for our growing buy-side client base on Triparty,” said Ted Leveroni, head of margin services at BNY Mellon. “In our 240th year of business, we are proud to utilise our expertise to form relationships that provide innovative solutions and capabilities for our clients.” 

The partnership connects BNY Mellon’s $5.25 trillion triparty liquidity pool into GLMX’s $2 trillion network.  

“Building interoperability with BNY Mellon creates a seamless workflow from negotiation and execution to settlement for our global clients,” added GLMX CEO, Glenn Havlicek. “This step is consistent with GLMX’s objective of providing a single access point which connects the global money market to deep liquidity pools, regardless of trade structure, settlement type or trading instrument.” 

At the backend of last year, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) agreed a $100 million repo transaction with the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility (LSF) and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) within BNY Mellon’s triparty facility to incentivise sustainability-linked investments in Africa. 

The post BNY Mellon to enable buy-side to direct repo trades at point of execution appeared first on The TRADE.

The new buy-side trading relationship specifically concerns a division of Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s EMEA business, The TRADE understands. 

As part of the agreement, BNY Mellon is delivering global trade execution services in EMEA, the US and APAC markets across fixed income, FX, derivatives and ETFs.  

BNY Mellon’s buy-side trading solutions business was launched last year, providing a flexible solution. As the firm explained, “outsourced trading does not have to be a one-sized fits all approach, it can be customised to meet your needs”. 

Currently, the offering includes a ‘partial outsourcing’ offering wherein a supplemental service is offered, as well as ‘full outsourcing’ where the firm assumes the responsibilities of the trading desk. It supports institutional clients with global multi-asset trade execution services across over 100 countries. 

Read more: The Outsourced Trading Handbook 2023

“BNY Mellon is proud to support Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s sophisticated trading needs as they grow their world class investment platform,” said the firm in an official statement. 

Outsourced trading is a trend which continues to be on the rise, whether full outsourcing or a supplement to the trading desk, more factors are pushing firms towards the service.

The attention has been increasingly turning to larger managers and while for the C-suite it might be an obvious economic decision, for many on the trading desk the topic continues to be a somewhat contentious one.

The post Goldman Sachs AM set to leverage BNY Mellon’s buy-side trading solution appeared first on The TRADE.

Paul Battams was named head of international equity trading at BlackRock following 23 years with the firm. He was most recently head of EMEA equity trading, overseeing a team of 14 traders covering the scope of equities and equity derivatives execution for the entirety of BlackRock’s investment teams. Prior to joining BlackRock as equity derivative trader in 2009, Battams was an equity trader at Barclays Global Investors for 11 years.

Following this, BlackRock appointed Nick Craze to take over from Battams as head of the EMEA equity trading desk.  Craze has been on the desk for more than 15 years and prior to this promotion oversaw the ‘model and derivatives group’ on the BlackRock EMEA equity desk since 2016. He will now manage the entire desk, made up of 14 traders, having previously managed a team of six. Craze joined the asset manager back in 2006, initially working in asset allocation and equity investments before becoming an equity trader.

Tourmaline Partners appointed Peter Murden as managing director – equity trading, as it seeks to further enhance its market reach, as revealed by The TRADE. In his new position, effective as of this month, Murden will be London-based and take on a client-facing role. Before the move to Tourmaline, Murden was a managing director at RBC Capital Markets and prior to this, spent 18 years at Redburn, most recently as a partner in equity trading, before departing following the Rothschild takeover in 2022. Murden has almost 30 years’ experience in the industry having worked several trading roles across the sell-side having begun his career at JP Morgan, then Flemings, back in 1994. His equity trading experience covers Asia, Europe, North America, and the UK.

Stephan Leithner has been appointed as the chief executive officer for Deutsche Börse, taking on the role from 1 October 2024. Leithner will take over the position from Theodor Weimer who has held the chief executive job since 2018. The two will operate as co-CEOs until the end of the year. Leithner has been a member of the executive board of Deutsche Börse AG since 2018, responsible for pre- & post-trading. Deutsche Borse said a decision on his succession will be made in due course. Weimer took over the chief executive role in 2018, moving over from his CEO position at HypoVereinsbank UniCredit Bank. During that time, he has overseen the acquisition of SimCorp and Axioma, among other initiatives such as a 10-year partnership with Google Cloud.

The post People Moves Monday: BNY Mellon, BlackRock, Tourmaline Partners and more… appeared first on The TRADE.

Bianca Gould has been appointed head of fixed income and equities EMEA, based in London.

Gould joins BNY Mellon after three years at RBC Capital Markets where she previously served as co-head of equities electronic sales and trading.

Earlier in her career, Gould served at Redburn Partners as head of algorithmic solutions as well as holding an equities cash sales trading role.

Elsewhere, Kathleen Kinsella has joined BNY Mellon as head of US fixed income sales, based in New York.

Kinsella most recently served as head of US and Latin America fixed income sales at CIBC.

Separate to these appointments, BNY Mellon has unveiled the launch of a new digital direct-to-custody trading solution for clients’ investment and cash management needs.

Named NEXEN Markets, the digital platform is designed to enable clients to place equity, ETF and US Treasury orders directly from their custody accounts.

“These strategic hires in tandem with our innovative product launches are just a couple of examples of how we are continuing to invest in our fixed income and equities Franchise, empowering our culture and enabling us to be more for our clients,” said Rob Lynch, global head of fixed income and equities.  

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Named NEXEN Markets, the platform is designed to enable clients to place equity, ETF and US Treasury orders directly from their accounts.

Launching this week, the platform will provide clients with a real-time view of cash balances and positions, with a view to supporting straight-through processing and mitigating settlement and operational risks.

Additional features include direct electronic order communication from custody accounts, real-time trade execution data, price stream for click-to-trade capabilities, and automated end-to-end processing from trade to settlement.

BNY Mellon ranks among the top 12 dealers in executive Treasury bill volume on Bloomberg and is an authorised participant for over 40 ETF issuers.

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