eFinancialCareers

Electronic trading is a fast-moving world, where innovation is paramount to keep an edge over your competitors. Not surprisingly, therefore, banks' recruitment requirements are also something of a chameleon, continually shifting in line with market requirements.

One interesting pattern to emerge in recent months is a shift away from the more traditional avenues of programme trading, direct market access and algorithms towards internalisation (making margin by crossing client trades with internal pools of liquidity), and therefore sell-side focused electronic trading sales people are the flavour of the month.

Two banks which have recently invested in this area are Morgan Stanley, which hired Matthew McClean as executive director, wholesale from Cheuvreux's execution sales team and Citi, which recruited Paul Kelly from NYFIX as managing director, head of sales. Morgan Stanley also took on James Watson as a director within execution sales to add further weight to their buy-side penetration.

Another focus for the sell side, particularly those firms which have a bias of high frequency and statistical arbitrage clients, is the ever increasing necessity to lower latency and subsequently fend off stiff competition in this increasingly speed-sensitive arena. Staff that have the technical expertise to provide this reduction are in demand, as are sales people who can market these technical services.

The multilateral trading facility (MTF) market is showing signs of consolidation – following talk of the London Stock Exchange acquiring Turquoise – and some firms are capitalising on the fall-out. For example, Duncan Higgins who headed client relationship management at Turquoise has recently been appointed as director, electronic trading sales at ITG in Europe.

Going into 2010, good trade cost analysis (TCA) and analytics professionals are likely to dominate e-trading divisions' New Year wish lists, with a particular with emphasis on technical, quant and product-focused individuals.

The electronic, algo and program trading recruitment market has picked up recently and is certainly looking more buoyant, even compared to early summertime.

A few significant and senior hires produced a domino effect of further staff being poached and banks seeking to protect existing staff have been forced to ring fence their most important team members. This has in turn been has led to guaranteed bonuses. Whereas bonuses generally are unlikely reach record highs, market sentiment is that they will certainly be up on last year within this space, if of course you are at the right bank.

Marcus Newman is director and specialist in the electronic, algorithmic and program trading markets at search firm Riversdale Consulting.