The company will now consist of four main global business lines – a structure that it believes will better reflect “the new global market environment” and enable it to respond more efficiently to clients’ needs, so that they receive a superior service.
Nicolas Breteau, global head of sales and front office at Newedge in London, told FOW in Boca Raton that one of the reasons for moving away from regional organisation was that many of the brokerage’s clients were global. “Most clients trade across regions — we need to be consistent in terms of product offering,” he said.
The global structure will “work in conjunction with” the firm’s current regional organisation, it said in a statement. Newedge has more than 3,000 staff in Europe, North and South America, Asia, the Middle East and Australia.
The four business lines are: fixed income, currencies and commodities (Ficc), headed by Pierre Gay; prime brokerage, led by Philippe Teilhard de Chardin; clearing sales and professional trading group, under Chris Topple; and John Ruskin’s financial futures and options (FF&O) and equities execution group. The four heads report to Breteau.
Patrice Blanc, Newedge’s CEO, said in a statement that the new structure would lead to “increased client knowledge, stronger risk/return profile and enhanced supervisory oversight”.
Breteau said that having a more product-focused structure would give Newedge “the ability to react quickly to every opportunity”, and that four business lines gave “the right level of granularity”.
He also said the FF&O line was the group’s core business. Ruskin told FOW that the business line he heads was “going to concentrate more on the institutional client base”.
Breteau also believes different countries’ regulatory regimes are becoming more closely aligned, which facilitates a division across business lines. “We see the same patterns [in regulation] across the world,” he said.
Each business line will operate under a unique business model with its own P&L, giving Newedge a clearer view of their performance.
The unveiling of the new structure is the culmination of a process that has been going on for some months.
In November Ruskin became global head of FF&O execution – a title to which equities has now been added. Then in December, Newedge appointed former Morgan Stanley man John Fay as head of its Americas operations, based in New York.
In January Newedge moved Laurent Cunin, who had been acting CEO and head of sales for the Americas, to Hong Kong to become head of Asia Pacific.
That freed up Pierre Gay, who had run the Asian business, to become global head of Ficc, which covers forex, fixed income and all the commodities: energy, agricultural and metals.
Besides these four business lines, Newedge will have a separate set of support and control functions: risk, finance, human resources, IT, operations, brand and communications, legal and compliance, audit and strategy. There is an eSolutions group, a client account management division and regional groups for the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific.
Sian Williams in Boca Raton
Jon Hay +44 207 779 8372 jhay@fow.com