FlexTrade Systems, which provides broker-neutral order and execution management trading platforms for equities, foreign exchange, listed derivatives and fixed income, has announced the appointment of Matthew York as Product Owner – Fixed Income.
Based in the company’s London office, York will lead product and business development for FlexTrade’s fixed income EMS.
Matthew York comes to FlexTrade after spending fourteen years building thinkFolio, a cross asset class order management system (OMS), which was acquired by IHS Markit Ltd (NASDAQ:INFO) in 2013. Previously he worked in various roles within asset management at Investec Asset Management and INVESCO.
According to York, the electronification of the Fixed Income markets combined with changes in government regulations are challenging, but also creating great opportunities in re-imagining fixed income trading solutions.
The ability to aggregate market data and venues alone does not answer all the needs of buy-side traders. Equity models for proving best execution and trade cost analysis do not lend themselves well to Fixed Income trading. The consolidation of all activity to provide demonstrable historical analysis on comparable outcomes is key to defining an order execution policy and implementing a best execution framework. Long gone are the days where a print of a chat window will suffice.
“I am pleased to welcome Matthew to the FlexTrade team,” said Vikas Kedia, Managing Director, FlexTrade UK Ltd in London. “Matthew’s past experience in developing fixed income modeling for cross asset trading systems will be invaluable to FlexTrade as we further develop and enhance our fixed income solutions, with particular focus on MiFID II.”
“Joining a market innovator such as FlexTrade and leveraging their amazing competencies in cross-asset class execution management and TCA was an opportunity to good to pass up,” added York. “Using FlexTrade as an aggregator gives clients the ability to source liquidity, execute trades, prove best execution and control venue selection in a fragmented market place.”