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.
He was then tapped by
proprietary trading firm Getco,
which then became KCG, as a
managing director and head of
ETFs and equities.
Hsu has a professional teaching qualification in computer
science from University College
Dublin, as well as a BSc degree
in economics and finance. n