Pan-European clearing house EMCF has appointed Hugh Brown as director of UK markets. In his newly-created position, Brown will be EMCF’s representative in London, managing the relationships with UK-based platforms and clients, liaising with regulators and industry bodies and helping to develop the firm’s strategy and position on industry issues.
Brown joins EMCF following 17 years with the London Stock Exchange Group, where his roles included managing trading, post-trading and regulatory strategy. He will report to Jan Booij, CEO at EMCF.
“Hugh joins EMCF at a critical time for the European financial sector, when the marketplace is about to start offering interoperability,” said Booij. “We are fortunate to add to our team someone with experience on both the exchange and central counterparty (CCP) side, which will assist us greatly in service clients and platforms of EMCF in the UK.”
Based in the Netherlands, EMCF recently cut its fees in response to interoperability initiatives that require Europe’s CCPs to compete with each other for flow. The platform announced a 50% reduction in fees for some clients, starting 1 October 2011.
EMCF currently provides clearing services for multilateral trading facilities BATS Europe, Burgundy, Chi-X Europe, Quote MTF, TOM, Nasdaq OMX Nordic as well as Nasdaq OMX First North.
Chi-X Europe has said it will offer post-trade interoperability from the start of next year, with a choice of four clearers including EMCF, EuroCCP, LCH.Clearnet and SIX x-clear. BATS Europe introduced its own interoperating service in July with EMCF, but the CCP has now said it will join BATS’ scheme early next year.