Amundi considers outsourced trading for Asia clients

Fund manager Amundi says it may offer its Asian trading capabilities to external clients from its three regional dealing desks.

Fund manager Amundi says it may offer its Asian trading capabilities to external clients. The firm has US$70 billion in assets under management in Asia. It currently operates three regional dealing desks (Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore), which are supervised from the Singapore office.

“We provide execution services, providing those services to external clients could be a challenge we may like to take up, so for example selling our services to a firm which has no trading desk,” says David Logerais, the head of Asian trading at Amundi Singapore. He is responsible for the trio of desks in Asia.

Amundi has 11 traders across Asia dealing in every product; foreign exchange, equity, fixed income, money markets and derivatives and they trade all Asian markets. The timing would depend on the opportunities that arise, though Logerais is keen on advancing the concept. We asked him for which clients the service would be suitable.

“Smaller fund managers or even for some big institutional clients who would do the investment themselves but who don’t necessarily have the right technology in place,” he said.  “Trading technologies are increasingly expensive and with the additional reporting and regulatory requirements on top of that, the trading infrastructure requires high investment.”

In Asia, the firm shares resources globally using the Amundi core list of brokers and counterparties, benefiting from the Amundi Tier 1 ranking, access to liquidity and pricing aggressiveness on the secondary market. It also benefits from privileged liquidity on the primary market.

“The trading desks in Asia are entirely coordinated with the global trading business line,” said Logerais. “This coordination is crucial to us in terms of procedures and technology, especially trading tools and trading platforms.”

An Asian service would not be the first time that Amundi has offered this outsourced capability. It is also on the menu elsewhere in the world.

“We already do it in Paris. The trading desk in Paris is an externalised entity,” said Logerais. “It is a spin-off from the Amundi parent company. It is a dedicated execution service provider to the group, Amundi and to Credit Agricole at a larger level, so all the asset management companies of the group benefit from it.”

 

 

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