Olivetree Financial Group, an equity broker and technology provider, has hired a new global head of product sales as part of efforts to realign its business to better serve the buy-side’s trading needs.
Charlotte Wall will join Olivetree's London office on 1 November and will hold responsibility for sales of the firm’s OTAS buy-side platform to institutional investors and hedge funds.
Wall will join Olivetree from Markit Securities Finance, a provider of securities lending data and tools, where she was head of sales. She also spent 16 years at Morgan Stanley, leading the bank’s European equities financing business.
“We
have now made the transition from a pure securities business to a financial
technology company,” Daryn Kutner, CEO and chairman of Olivetree Financial
Group, told theTRADEnews.com. “We
see a structural change happening in the market that is leading the buy-side to
take more control of the way they implement and manage orders.”
The OTAS platform aims to facilitate a more meaningful dialogue between buy-side trading desks and their portfolio managers. It includes tools that help traders schedule trades and manage portfolios based on systematic and quantitative signals. It also incorporates tools to optimise execution, reduce trading costs and exit positions.
“We are now in conversations with buy-side firms that share a similar vision to us and want to enhance performance within portfolio construction and management and the execution process. We work to support this by helping clients bring many of the decision-making elements of trading in house, instead of relying on traditional sources,” added Kutner.
Kutner founded Olivetree in 2009 after 13 years at Morgan Stanley, during which he managed the firm’s US and European equities units. The firm launched Olivetree Solutions, its technology business, last year in a bid to diversify its offering.