Peter Randall, one of the most candid executives to grace the European market structure landscape in recent years, has stepped down as CEO of retail focused trading platform Equiduct.
Randall, who led Equiduct for three years and whose profile helped to establish the venue’s value proposition, will be replaced by Artur Fischer, joint CEO of Börse Berlin and a member of the board for Easdaq, Equiduct’s holding company.
The future of Equiduct remains unclear after majority shareholder Citadel decided last month to cease market-making operations on the venue.
Equiduct’s board of directors, which includes representatives from majority shareholder Citadel and US broker dealer Knight Capital, are reportedly considering a closure of the platform if it is unable to secure additional funding. Equiduct has, however, confirmed Virtu Financial Ireland and Winterflood as new liquidity providers over the last two weeks.
Equiduct announced record turnover last month, trading €4.2 billion worth of equities, giving it a 0.59% share of overall European equity trading last month, according to Thomson Reuters. So far this month, the platform’s market share has dipped to 0.39%.
The founding head of Chi-X Europe, the largest multilateral trading facility that was bought by BATS Global Markets last year, Randall has been at the forefront of European equity market structure evolution.
Prior to leading Chi-X Europe, Randall worked at agency broker Instinet and James Capel. He has also spent time in Hong Kong, focusing on the Asian retail market for a broker planning to establish an online service for retail investors.
Randall has never been afraid to pull any punches, particularly prior to the introduction of MiFID in 2007, which allowed competing venues like Chi-X Europe, to challenge domestic exchanges. Below are a few of our favourite/most insightful Randall quotes over the years:
“We had a lot of fun. It was a family-type affair – a lot of decisions were made at the kitchen table.” [on the creation of Chi-X]
“To translate Linear B back into some form of demotic Greek is probably easier than trying to understand the London Stock Exchange’s pricing model,” [May 2008]
“The problems at Terminal 5 put the airline back a long way, hurt London’s brand and inconvenienced a lot of passengers. Longer term, it will influence people’s decisions about who they’re going to fly and what terminals they’re going to want to pass through.” [September 2008, after a major LSE outage]
“If the LSE has a peashooter and an air rifle, I’ve got an AK-47.” [FT: On Chi-X Europe’s first anniversary]
“Given this level of technological advance, there might not even be any need for a company to launch an IPO on an exchange 15 or 20 years down the line.” [Speaking to The TRADE, February 2010]
Normally, not lost for a word on any occasion, Peter did not return calls requesting comment for this article.