Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) will be bringing in innovations in the near future to its Asian electronic trading product range as well as enhancements to its Hong Kong dark pool.
Murat Atamer, who recently joined the firm, says that details of the new products are currently confidential, but one or two new products should be rolled out before the end of the year.
Atamer started work at BAML at the end of May, in the role of co-head of electronic trading for Asia Pacific. He co-runs runs sales trading in Asia with Jonathan Brunello and has sole responsibility for product. He joined from Credit Suisse in Hong Kong, where he focused on product.
“I’m happy about what I see here in terms of platform strengths. We’ve grown our business quite a bit, more than the average volume increase than we see in the market,” he said. “Our e trading teams in Asia is young and very capable. It has a very quantitative framework. It’s an advanced platform and in terms of development, everything is done and vetted by quants.”
David Broadfield also joined BAML from Credit Suisse a month later and is now BAML’s head of north Asia sales.
In Asia, BAML’s electronic business is institutional-only. The firm has seen considerable growth in hedge fund business this year with long only clients already standing at a higher base.
“We are working very hard in partnering with our clients, giving them feedback and helping them execute better,” said Atamer. “A lot of people talk about these things, but generally, I don’t see it done all that much. So we want to change that and really help our clients do better. We’ve got the right product – a much more advanced product together with a stronger front office footprint as well as significant IT resources that I can use for the benefit of the clients.”
BAML will also be announcing some refinements to its Hong Kong dark pool, where the team is working on improving liquidity and dark pool logic.
‘Clients value these platforms and we recommend them to do counterparty selection and have all the protections in place,” said Atamer. “They are good for trading, and clients recognise that, so we’re investing there.”