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Rosenblatt Securities announced that Tom Sanders, a long-time veteran of the international trading arena, has joined Rosenblatt as a Managing Director. Previously, Tom was a Managing Director at Bank of America where he ran the New York-based international desk, increasing revenues by more than six-fold in the four years he was in charge. Prior to that, Tom traded European equities for NatWest Securities and European, Latin American and South African equities for UBS for more than a decade combined. Tom got his start in the business trading OTC stocks for Drexel Burnham and then McDonald & Co. Tom will be working out of Rosenblatt’s headquarters in New York.
Dick Rosenblatt, CEO of Rosenblatt Securities and one of six Executive Floor Governors of the NYSE, said, “With the growth in international assets under management far exceeding the pace of US AUM growth, we have had an interest in expanding beyond trading just US equities for some time now. In fact, we have been studying the European landscape particularly closely since 2002 when we launched our European subsidiary, RSI Europe, in Dublin, which has been marketing our US execution services to European institutions, but not trading in the local markets. However, we only enter new lines of business where we have expertise in addition to perceiving an opportunity. Tom Sanders brings that expertise. He has successfully either started or run non-US trading operations at several large firms previously so he is the perfect person to launch our efforts. We are of course thrilled to bring someone of Tom’s caliber and experience onto our team. And with both extensive developed and emerging markets experience, Tom puts us in a position to cover trading needs throughout the world although we suspect that Canada and developed Europe and Asia may be the areas of greatest opportunity for us out of the gate.”
Kieron O’Brien, Managing Director of RSI Europe, Rosenblatt Securities’ European subsidiary, added that, “With the implementation of MiFID rapidly approaching in Europe and the proliferation of new venues like Chi-X, Project Turquoise, Equiduct, and others threatening to fragment the traditional exchange market in Europe much like the ’97 Order Handling Rules revolutionized the US equity markets, we firmly believe that our market structure expertise and the efforts we have made for many years to navigate US and European customers through the complexities of the US marketplace will become similarly valuable to customers trading in other global markets, in particular Europe. We plan to carve out a similar niche there. Rosenblatt was one of the first to do it in the US and it is one of things that attracted to me to Rosenblatt as a partner to begin with. The Rosenblatt formula has worked by shedding light on the US marketplace and we see no reason why the model won’t translate well in Europe considering the parallels. While execution-only agency brokerage has been the rare exception rather than the rule in Europe, unbundling trends in Europe, where the UK’s FSA has been a leader, also suggest opportunity for our pure agency approach. We are champing at the bit to have our execution performance compared directly with our peers rather than sometimes potentially not getting a shot because we don’t offer a traditional research product bundled with our execution services.”
Scott Burrill, a partner and managing director of the firm who is responsible for, among other things, the firm’s transaction cost analysis efforts added: “With MiFID’s emphasis on best execution, we are seeing much more interest than ever before in transaction cost analysis for EU trading. Considering the suite of tools we have built out over the past couple of years and my own prior experience in non-US developed markets with respect to both trading and portfolio construction, I think we are very well-positioned to offer solutions to US and European-based asset managers holding international stocks who are turning their focus to transaction cost analysis. Asia, Canada and Latin America are also undergoing their own changes and we see opportunities there as well.”
