Clearing and trading industry veteran Charles William “Bill” Yancey has gone full circle from Southwest to FirstSouthwest.
Yancey recently joined FirstSouthwest, as managing director of clearing and execution services. Yancey has served as president of the Security Traders Association and comes to FirstSouthwest after stints at Penson Financial Services and Automated Trading Desk. Before that, he spent 13 years at Southwest Securities, where he ran equity trading, proprietary market making, institutional portfolio trading, agency trading and correspondent execution services.
FirstSouthwest, one of the smaller clearing brokerages, expects to take advantage of numerous midsize brokerages that are seeking a new clearing broker in an industry with fewer clearing offerings. Many bulge bracket firms either have fired correspondents or don’t give them the level of service they need. “We may not be a perfect offering for everyone in the middle market. But we think we have an offering to lot of those in that space,” Yancey said.
These target firms, he said, would tend to have a mix of business, including options. FirstSouthwest is a fixed-income brokerage with an emphasis on public finance. Yancey said it will also be adding new investment products in the next few months, targeting advisers.
“The RIA space is really growing and there will be more opportunities there than in the broker-dealer space,” Yancey said. He said FirstSouthwest will offer a new “soup to nuts” suite of products for advisers late this year or in the first quarter of 2013.
FirstSouthwest now has some 80 correspondents. It seeks brokerages that are diversified across stocks, options and all types of fixed-income securities.
“Bill is a business builder who brings well-established relationships with many industry partners and clients, which will help us expand our suite of products and services,” said John Muschalek, vice chairman of FirstSouthwest.
FirstSouthwest, Yancey added, is not looking for clients who do “just one particular thing, like high-frequency trading. Ours is more of a general securities practice.”
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