Raymond James has hired away a dozen options traders and salespeople from Knight Capital Group in a bid to break into the institutional options trading business.
Raymond James said, in a statement, it is forming a strategic options desk that will “customize options strategies designed to mitigate risk and enhance yield.” The desk will be led by Ryan Sylvester and Adam Templeton and will be based in Raymond James’ New York office.
Sylvester and Templeton ran the institutional options business at Knight for two years after joining from Newedge, a joint venture of French banks Societe Generale and Credit Agricole.
Moving to Raymond James with Sylvester and Templeton are 10 traders and salespeople. Among them are James Murphy, Robert Mabry, Colin Drowica, Andrew Kramer, and Brad Maniulow. All are based in New York except Maniulow, who works out of the firm’s San Francisco office.
The move into institutional options is a first for Raymond James, which has long operated a New York-based institutional equities business. The initiative is also part of a pattern of the past year or two of mid-sized firms entering the business as their cash equities business dries up. Sylvester and Templeton report to Dan McMahon, Raymond James’ head of institutional equity trading.
For Knight, the move is the second mass defection since the firm announced it was merging with Getco. In February, nine cash equities traders jumped ship to Janney Montgomery Scott.
According to Knight spokesman Jonathan Mairs, Knight remains in the institutional options execution business via its sales traders and Knight Direct service. “We plan to rebuild the options sales trading team,” Mairs told Traders Magazine Monday.
