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Profile | Rob Crane & Mike Seigne


What changes have been made since the financial crisis? Mike Seigne: We have been focused on many things, but central to our changes is improving liquidity access for our clients. In the first phase, post MiFID I, it was all about re-aggregation of venues. Now it’s more about changing how we offer execution services to help address fragmentation of liquidity resulting from different business models or execution silos. One of our key strengths is our ability to move quickly. We have reacted to meet our clients’ demand to offer a new set of options to better service their execution needs. Now, clients can have a single point of contact or a fully segregated service for their different trading requirements. The goal is to put the choice in our clients’ hands whilst being both skilled and technically able to deliver execution excellence across the board.


Rob Crane: As a firm we are strong believers in maintaining specialisation and not just offering a homogenous execution model. Many clients really value expertise and detailed, in-depth knowledge, others are happier with a single point of contact, and some are somewhere in between; we are now able to cater for all.


As a result of these changes, how different is the role of the sales trader today? Rob Crane: In the past, the sales trader focused on directing highly relevant stock and market information to clients and managing a predominantly


“Many clients really value expertise and detailed, in-depth knowledge, others are happier with a single point of contact, and some are


somewhere in between; we are now able to cater for all.” Rob Crane


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manual order flow. Now, they still deliver the content but also act as the conduit between all Goldman Sachs has to offer and how those products can be tailored to a client’s specific needs. The buyside now have much better tools and access to advanced execution algorithms, but the sales trader in many ways has become more relevant in the trading process. Now, more than ever before, they are really able to differentiate the liquidity in terms of where it can be traded, sourced and negotiated.


Mike Seigne: We have done a lot of work to empower our sales traders with more execution- specific information and if you look at how we now deploy our traders, we have a heavier concentration in areas where clients have told us they most value their expertise, such as emerging markets or mid-cap stocks.


Has regulation been one of the biggest challenges? Rob Crane: We broadly support the objectives of the various regulatory reform initiatives that are on-going in Europe and elsewhere. Of course, there are implementation challenges that the industry is experiencing more generally, in particular as further regulatory provisions are clarified and as relevant implementation deadlines approach. One of the biggest challenges for us is managing the broader resources needed to get these various implementation projects defined, such as the compliance, legal and operational teams as well as communicating these changes to our clients – often in a short space of time.


What impact do you think the proposed caps under MiFID will have on dark trading? Mike Seigne: The brokerage community and our clients believe there is value in non-displayed liquidity and unfortunately this message has not been articulated clearly enough. We are concerned that the proposed caps on the reference price waiver will have a negative impact on the ability of our clients – which include asset managers, insurers, and pension funds to achieve best execution on behalf of their stakeholders.


Best Execution | Summer 2013


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