BIDS Trading, the
alternative trading system (ATS) created by a consortium of US investment banks to service the US equity block trading market, has named industry veteran Richard Levin as General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Secretary to the Board of Directors.
Levin will be responsible for managing BIDS’s legal, regulatory and compliance affairs. He will also work closely with US regulators to ensure that BIDS fulfills all regulatory requirements.
The BIDS platform, which offers customizable tools to allow end-users to negotiate block trades, is expected to launch in spring 2007.
“Richard will play a leading role in BIDS’ effort to provide traders with a unique, alternative liquidity source in the block trading market,” said BIDSs’ Chief Executive Officer Timothy Mahoney. “Richard’s extensive experience with market structure issues will be of tremendous importance as BIDS seeks to improve market efficiency and reduce transaction costs through the BIDS platform.”
Prior to joining BIDS, Levin served as General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Secretary to the Board of Directors of EquiLend Holdings. He was part of the original management team that launched these curities finance joint venture of eleven leading financial services firms, including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and UBS. In this role, he was responsible for all legal, regulatory and compliance matters associated with the firm’s US and UK broker-dealer and ATS subsidiaries, including US, UK, Japanese, and Canadian regulators.
“I am excited to be part of the team behind this new venture,” says Levin. “As we move towards the launch date, I look forward to BIDS achieving its goal of creating a deep liquidity pool for all market participants to anonymously trade large block orders.”
Levin has also served as General Counsel of NexTrade Holdings, Inc., the owner and operator of the NexTrade ECN which was acquired in 2006 by Citigroup and as Assistant General Counsel and Regulatory Affairs Officer of Knight Trading Group, Inc. While at Knight, Levin represented Nasdaq’s largest market maker before the SEC, the NASD, Nasdaq, and UK regulators.
BIDS Trading L.P. is a registered broker-dealer and the operator of the BIDS Alternative Trading System (ATS), which was designed to bring counterparties together to anonymously trade large blocks of shares.
Developed by a consortium of firms, the BIDS ATS aims to resolve the classic paradox of the block trader– the need to find legitimate trading counterparties without prematurely revealing trading intentions.
The founding firms are: Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS.
BIDS will be open to all qualifying broker-dealers and their institutional clients, subject to basic credit and regulatory requirements.