Knight Capital Group grabbed a team of 15 salespeople and traders from Newedge USA, the U.S. arm of the big French derivatives and commodities brokerage, to boost its presence in the exchange traded funds business.
Behind the move, a Knight executive explained in a statement, is increasing use of ETFs by institutional investors and constant stream of new products entering the market. Knight already had a small presence in the ETF market. The new hires include 13 based in Knight’s headquarters in Jersey City and two in London.
Knight’s new ETF group will be managed by the three co-heads of the Newedge ETF Index Group and will report to Knight’s Greg Voetsch, an executive vice president and head of Knight’s institutional client group.
Running the group are managing directors Reginald Browne, Eric Lichtenstein and Darren Taube. All three will focus on market-making and institutional sales. Browne began his career at O’Connor & Associates in Philadelphia and has worked at various Wall Street firms since 1990. Both Taube and Lichtenstein began their careers at Spear, Leeds & Kellogg as specialists in the index derivatives group. In 2000, they co-founded a market-making firm on the American Stock Exchange, which was integrated into Newedge in December 2006.
Newedge was formed in 2007 by the merger of Societe Generale’s Fimat group and Credit Agricole’s Calyon Financial brokerage arm. It is one of the largest derivatives brokers in the world.
