Liquidnet, an agency broker and block-trading venue operator, has announced the appointment of Andrew Geissler to its equity capital markets team, to facilitate issuer access to institutional investors.
Geissler will join Liquidnet's equity capital markets and issuer services business, reporting directly to the unit's head Steve Greenblatt. His main responsibilities will include building and strengthening relationships with the issuer community to enable them to tap into the investment they require to support their business.
Liquidnet's equity capital markets and issuer services business was started a year-and-half ago and aims to deliver greater transparency to corporate issuers to help inform decisions relating to the optimal timing, structure and strategy for equity offerings or repurchases.
This includes access to Liquidnet's block market via its trading desk, and Liquidnet Infrared, a desktop application, which provides issuers with insight into institutional sentiment and how their stock is trading through a view of aggregated investor sentiment and research. Liquidnet also runs the Leading Indicators Conference, an event that brings together leading company executives, academics and industry experts to discuss macroeconomic issues.
Geissler joins Liquidnet from US sell-side firm Knight Capital, where he was a managing director with responsibility for the origination and execution of equity capital markets transactions including at-the-market primary offerings, share repurchase programmes, restricted stock transactions and the sale of concentrated equity positions for corporations, insiders and private equity investors. He has also worked for the equity capital markets divisions of Citi and PaineWebber.
“Liquidnet's institutional marketplace, where the world's largest investors already buy and sell large blocks of stock safely and efficiently, is now open for corporate business,” said Greenblatt. “We have found that corporate treasurers, chief financial officers and investor relations officers are very aware and very concerned about the quality of the liquidity in the markets today where the majority of the volume is created by market speculators who care very little about company fundamentals. When corporations buy back or offer stock, they have the same fiduciary obligation to do it at the best price for their shareholders. Andrew's contacts, experience and knowledge of the space will be very helpful in helping us build our market share in this area.”
“Liquidnet has created the first real innovation in the equity capital markets space since I have been in the business. For me to be able to deliver a product that is so clearly differentiating in this space is a tremendous opportunity,” said Geissler.