Agency broker Instinet has appointed four executives, including three sales traders, to its new office in Sydney, Australia, to support its aim of becoming a top 10 institutional brokerage in the country by the end of this year.
Instinet Australia was granted an onshore participant licence for the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on 1 February, which enabled the broker to serve Australian clients from their home country rather than through its Hong Kong office, which had remote membership to the ASX.
The firm has hired Scot Burton as a senior sales trader, Alex Lai and Dan Heavener as sales traders and Chris Vella to work in equities IT.
Both Lai and Heavener join Instinet from Credit Suisse, while Burton previously worked at brokers BZW, JBWere
and ITG. Vella, a FIX specialist, previously worked at UBS in London and Sydney, ABN Amro and a range of major Australian institutions.
“We want to trade a lot more Aussie equities for Aussie clients,” said Glenn Lesko, CEO of Instinet in Asia, in a statement. “To date the majority of our business has been trading international equities for local clients, or local equities for international clients. Now that we’re fully onshore, with a local team, we hope to grow our domestic Australian trading to represent 50% of Instinet Australia’s business.”