MKM Adds Eight Sales Traders
Traders Magazine Online News, February 5, 2013
MKM Partners, reporting strong growth in 2012, has hired eight additional sales traders.
Behind the hires was a 20 percent increase in revenues at MKM last year and a surfeit of available sales traders, according to MKM president and co-founder Steve Messina.
Four of the traders became available after their previous employers shut down. MKM picked up two executives—Mehdi Sunderji and Kurt Peterson—from Atlantic Equities after the British firm closed its U.S. offices. MKM picked up two others—Keith Arnott and Dick Bennett—from Rochdale Securities after that Stamford firm stopped trading because of net capital issues.
MKM also brought on Terry Duffy, who had spent the previous eight years with Liquidnet and its Miletus unit; Paul Prentice from Collins Stewart; Tony Lombardo from hedge fund JMG Capital Management; and Mike Cohen from Princeton Securities.
The eight hires bring the total number of sales traders at the Stamford, Conn.-based institutional brokerage to 46, working out of eight offices.
The new hires are based in Stamford, New Jersey, San Francisco and the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The sales traders work closely with a 10-person centralized trading desk in Stamford, Messina said.
“All orders come through the desk,” he said. “We don’t have sales traders trading their own orders.”
MKM’s trading desk is run by Matt Casamassima and overseen by chairman and co-founder Tom Messina, Steve’s brother. The two Messinas co-founded MKM in 2001 after both worked at A.B. Watley for about six or seven years.
In total, about 100 individuals work for MKM, with 22 in research and 13 in research sales. The firm started out catering to hedge funds, but has since grown its business with long-only funds. The client roster is now about 55 percent hedge funds and 45 percent long-onlys and family offices.
Under chief executive Richard Castellano, MKM has doubled its staff over the past few years, Messina said. The long-time Morgan Stanley manager joined MKM in July 2009.
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