The TRADE Derivatives - Issue 16 Autumn 2016

Adam Rotello

Head of London fixed income options trading

DRW TRADING GROUP

As a native of Chicago, which boasts the largest group of proprietary trading firms, Adam Rotello joined market maker DRW Trading Group in 2006 after achieving a degree in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois.

Rotello believes the analytical and critical skills he attained from his degree have made him a natural fit to the proprietary trading world, in which the ability to identify arbitrage opportunities and act within a second is a must.

He began his career on
DRW’s US Treasury options
desk, before a brief stint on the
overnight trading desk, trading
on the Euro-Yen book. Following
the financial crisis, he moved
into commodities and began
trading in the soybean options
trading pit at the Chicago Board
of Trade (CBOT).

In 2011, Rotello made the move from Chicago to DRW’s London base, becoming a fixed income trader and managing its short sterling trading book. After three years, he now manages DRW’s London fixed income options trading desk. n

Sumit Mehta

Investment manager

LEGAL & GENERAL

Sumit Mehta is an investments manager and Legal & General (L&G), the UK’s largest asset manager. Working alongside its derivatives execution team Mehta’s role is to lead its derivatives strategy, both in the swaps and listed markets.

His career spans over 10 years across both the buy-and sell-side, with experience in equities and currencies hedging. Beginning his career in 2005 at Deutsche Bank in India, he moved to London two years later to work in RBS’s rates and inflation structuring team. He then became a senior vice president within the team, working alongside global macro hedge funds on transferring risk.

In 2014 he joined L&G as a portfolio manager leading the implementation of its liquidity framework, which Mehta says did not exist prior to his appointment.

Mehta says he is deeply involved with the execution team, coming up with broad plans for derivatives hedging and taking on relative vale decisions.

As well as leading the asset manager’s derivatives strategy, Mehta is a published author having released a book in June evaluating the trends and opportunities in the post-crisis derivatives market. n

Aidan Hsu

Trader

JUMP TRADING

Exchange-traded fund (ETF) specialist Aidan Hsu became the latest trader to move from the sell-side to high frequency trading (HFT), joining Jump Trading in June this year.

The move signalled the continued expansion of proprietary trading in the ETF market, which has traditionally been dominated by banks and asset managers.

Hsu has been involved in the ETF market since 2004, where he was an equity derivatives trader and ETF market maker at Susquehanna International Group for four years.

From there he became head of ETF trading at Liquid Capital Group in 2009, before being poached by Credit Suisse in 2011 becoming European head of ETF trading and one it’s most senior traders.