The former head of equity product management at SIX Swiss Exchange has departed to join anonymous block trading venue Liquidnet as head of product for EMEA, a spokesperson for the company confirmed.
Robert Cranston previously worked at Liquidnet in 2011 as a product and project manager, before joining Thomson Reuters in the same role.
Cranston spent over two years overseeing all equity trading services at SIX Swiss Exchange after joining the exchange operator in 2015.
The new hire for Liquidnet coincides with the start of MiFID II rules in Europe which has seen large-in-scale (LIS) activity surge across block trading venues, such as that operated by the New York-based firm.
Statistics from Fidessa recently revealed the proportion of dark-traded as LIS blocks reached a record 28.7% on 12 January, compared to 22.5% in November last year.
Speaking to The TRADE in December Mark Pumfrey, head of EMEA for Liquidnet, reiterated the importance of dark venues for large institutions despite MiFID II’s aim to push more trading activity onto exchanges.
“We expect conditional order types to grow and that will make a big difference to dark trading as you can now represent yourself conditionally in different LIS venues which makes trading in size easier,” he said.