SmartPool, the non-displayed multilateral trading facility run by exchange group NYSE Euronext, has appointed Paul Squires, head of trading at AXA Investment Managers, as an independent member of its board of directors. Squires will take up his responsibilities in May.
“As an experienced head trader across Paris and London, Paul brings a unique insight into the needs of the European buy-side community together with a wealth of operational and technical markets expertise,” said Lee Hodgkinson, CEO of SmartPool, in a statement. “We look forward to working with Paul as we extend our reach into continental Europe and build the SmartPool value proposition.”
Squires has been head of trading and deputy head of trading and securities financing at AXA IM since 2006, having been appointed head of the firm’s central dealing unit in 2004. He began his career as an equity trader for Mercury Asset Management (now part of BlackRock) in 1993 and became a UK equity trader for Sun Life Investment Management in 1996.
“I remain a strong advocate of both dark pools, which provide meaningful liquidity to institutional traders and the primary exchanges that have a stabilising role,” said Squires. “With a strong focus on European equities, I see Smartpool as a key component of this evolving trading landscape going forward.”
SmartPool was launched by NYSE Euronext in February 2009 in partnership with banking groups J.P. Morgan, HSBC and BNP Paribas. The platform had a pan-European dark trading market share of 1.86% in February 2010, according to figures from data vendor Thomson Reuters.