Otkritie, a Russian brokerage, has appointed Nicholas Richmond as director and head of equities trading, based in Moscow. The firm has also hired Howard Snell as a London-based director to oversee its UK business strategy. Snell will also have responsibility for corporate and investor relations.
Before joining Otkritie, Richmond was vice president and head of Russian trading at J.P. Morgan, where he ran the flow book and the Russian proprietary trading book in addition to his responsibilities for pricing and hedging risk. Prior to his position at J.P. Morgan, Richmond was a director and head of Russian American depository receipt trading at Deutsche UFJ, and before that a sales trader at Nomura, where he helped develop an order management system.
Snell was responsible for launching fellow Russian broker Troika’s UK and European business in 2003. He headed Troika’s UK subsidiary, which conducted European equity and fixed income brokerage, private banking, asset management and corporate finance businesses. He was also responsible for obtaining the firm’s FSA authorisation and regulation, and membership of the London Stock Exchange. Prior to joining Troika, Snell worked at UBS, where he was responsible for debt capital market origination for Russia and the CIS countries, and subsequently worked on a number of Russian bilateral and debt restructuring transactions.
“We are delighted to have hired two of the Russian investment industry’s most respected and experienced practitioners. Their appointments are further evidence of the aggressive growth plans we have as a business,” said Roman Lokhov, CEO of Otkritie Securities, in a statement.
This year Otkritie has added 100 new Russian and international institutional clients and has recruited 12 analysts from leading brokerages across Russia to its research team. Its trading volumes doubled month on month for the first six months of 2009, with its total exchange traded volume reaching $6.5 billion. Between January 2008 and the end of September 2009, Otkritie has jumped to 15th from 64th in the London Stock Exchange rankings for Russian Depository Receipts, with trading rising from £1.96 million to £419 million in that time.
Its brokerage now represents 10.5% of the exchange-traded derivatives market in Russia.