The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has hired Mark Ryland as chief technology officer of Baikal, the exchange’s European equities dark pool, scheduled for launch in Q2 this year.
Ryland’s appointment completes Baikal’s senior management team. The exchange hired Natan Tiefenbrun as commercial director and Chris Rennoldson as chief operating officer of the platform in January. All report to Baikal CEO John Wilson.
“Progress towards launch continues at an encouraging pace: the build phase has already begun and now that the management team is complete we look forward to announcing further technology developments in the next few weeks,” Wilson said in a statement.
Ryland was previously chief operating officer of SWX Europe, the London subsidiary of SIX Swiss Exchange, which was closed in November 2008. Before that, he held a series of equities trading technology positions, most recently at Merrill Lynch and HSBC, where he was global head of equities IT. According to the LSE, Ryland has extensive experience of delivering dark pool, smart order routing and algorithmic trading technology.
Baikal, which will be registered as a multilateral trading facility (MTFs), will offer execution algorithms and smart order routing in addition to non-displayed trading. It also aims to aggregate liquidity in Europe by connecting to other displayed and non-displayed MTFs.