Jarrod Yuster

Through the “strategic relationship” Pico is set to leverage its deep industry expertise to boost Coinbase Derivatives’ connectivity infrastructure. 

Jarrod Yuster, chair, founder and chief executive of Pico, said: “We recognise the growing demand for advanced technology infrastructure, high-performance connectivity, data and analytics in the digital assets industry.”

“[…] We have again proven our ability to provide innovative, reliable and scalable solutions tailored to the needs of digital asset markets, as well as leading banks, exchanges, asset managers and trading firms.” 

Read more: Coinbase wins approval to offer federally regulated crypto futures trading to eligible US customers

Specifically, the move entails a complete infrastructure migration, including relocating existing systems whilst ensuring operational continuity. 

In addition, the intra-colocation connectivity which has been introduced works to optimise communications between critical infrastructure components. The relationship will also connect Coinbase Derivatives and Pico clients.

“[Coinbase] provided a dedicated customer service team that gave us comprehensive oversight into the migration and ensured successful execution with minimal disruption to our operations,” added Greg Tusar, vice president of institutional product for Coinbase. 

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Rothschild & Co senior investment dealer, Greg Finke, has left the firm for a new opportunity at Polar Capital. Greg Finke joined the boutique asset manager after just over a year at Rothschild & Co as a senior investment dealer covering equities. Polar Capital confirmed his appointment. His new role is unconfirmed. Prior to joining Rothschild in January 2023, Finke spent nearly five years at Marathon Asset Management as a global equity trader covering equities and FX. Previously in his career, he also spent just under four years at Findlay Park Partners where he established the centralised dealing desk. He also previously spent 16 years at Instinet as a vice president in sales trading.

Ayesa Latif has been named global head of FX product at Citi, a newly created role, following almost eight years with the firm. As part of her new role, Latif is set to drive innovation in the area, as well as further enhance Citi’s product offering. Prior to this appointment, she spent three years as head of EMEA EFX sales, bank sales, platform sales, custody FX and cross border payments for FIs at Citi, and before that served as head of EMEA electronic FX sales. Previously, Latif was co-head EMEA electronic FX sales at Goldman Sachs for eight years.

Macquarie Group appointed Dylan Kluth head of equites trading for Asia Pacific. Kluth was promoted to the role after serving as portfolio manager/analyst at the firm over the last two years. Before joining Macquarie, Kluth spent nine years at AMP Capital, serving in a variety of senior positions. Most recently, he served as global head of dealing for just over a year, following a one-year stint as head of dealing for EMEA and Americas. Elsewhere in his tenure at AMP Capital, Kluth served as senior multi-asset dealer and as an equity dealer.

Joe Bellman was named head of dealing at Arbuthnot Latham following almost a decade with the firm. Bellman joined the business in 2014 as a dealer before being promoted to dealing manager, his most recent role. Bellman was named one of The TRADE’s rising stars of trading and execution back in 2022, a recognition of the most promising talents in the industry. His new position, for which he will be based out of London, is effective as of last month.

Technology services provider Pico named Linda Wallander vice president of EMEA sales. Before joining Pico, Wallander served as a senior sales executive for EMEA and Asia Pacific at data platform Exabel. Prior to that, she spent just over seven years at Nasdaq, most recently serving as director of sales for European Markets. This followed a nearly five-year stint at FactSet Research Systems, where she held an institutional sales role, focusing on Nordic banking and brokerage. Elsewhere in her career, Wallander held junior analyst roles for M&A at HSBC, DC Advisory Partners, Close Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

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Before joining Pico, Wallander served as a senior sales executive for EMEA and Asia Pacific at data platform Exabel.

Read more: Pico secures $200 million investment from Golden Gate Capital

Prior to that, she spent just over seven years at Nasdaq, most recently serving as director of sales for European Markets.

This followed a nearly five-year stint at FactSet Research Systems, where she held an institutional sales role, focusing on Nordic banking and brokerage.

Elsewhere in her career, Wallander held junior analyst roles for M&A at HSBC, DC Advisory Partners, Close Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

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The firm said it will use the additional capital to build out its infrastructure and data offering, as well as its market coverage across regions and asset classes.

In addition, Pico will use the funding to pursue M&A opportunities that will help bolster the firm’s global ecosystem of technology and services.

The funding round follows Pico’s acquisition of trading and enterprise analytics solutions provider Corvil Analytics in 2019 and trading and market data software solutions provider Redline Trading Solutions more recently in January this year.

“We have made significant investments in global expansion, product innovation, operational excellence and in our organisation, thereby laying the foundation to support the next wave of substantial growth,” said Jarrod Yuster, chairman, founder and CEO at Pico.

 “Golden Gate Capital’s deep financial services experience and track record of successful acquisitions at their portfolio companies will help advance our strategy.” 

Pico currently boasts a growing list of strategic investors and clients including Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, JP Morgan, UBS and CE Innovation Capital.

“We look forward to partnering with Jarrod, the Board and the rest of Pico’s management team to accelerate the Company’s momentum by pursuing additional acquisitions and making additional investments in the business that enable Pico to deepen its leadership in the market and continue to capture additional growth opportunities,” said Dan Haspel, a managing director at Golden Gate Capital.

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According to Pico, the new solution for monitoring strategy execution across the trading infrastructure will help business and operations teams make faster, more effective decisions.

The ability to obtain and action insights into execution quality and efficiency rapidly is an important factor in gaining a trading performance advantage, particularly in a competitive trading landscape where stakeholders need to attract and retain clients, capture more flow and maximise fill rates.

Through the use of data streamed from Corvil’s network instrumentation, Corvil Electronic Trading Data Warehouse offers visibility into transaction execution quality to correspond client trading behavior with execution path and counterparty performance.  

The platform provides real-time visibility at a granular level from individual trades to aggregate transaction outcomes. With that, clients are provided with a lens into technology stack performance and the impacts it has on trading.

Corvil Electronic Trading Data Warehouse also provides aggregate transaction flow monitoring, which allows isolation for specific clients, strategies, order types and counterparties. This offering will help reveal how execution path, component latency and market destinations impact the success of trading.

In addition, the solution offers full trade traceability from issuer to market to isolate degraded decision and transmission latencies, among other benefits.

“As trading systems become more complex and faster, we continue to invest in innovation that meets performance demands and advances our analytics capabilities,” said Roland Hamann, chief technology officer & head of APAC at Pico.

“Corvil’s high throughput, lossless, granularly time-stamped trading data capture provides an incredibly rich data source that can be used for broader analytics and use cases including trade analytics.”

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Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Pico called the deal a “key milestone”, with the addition of Redline’s multi-asset software solutions providing access to a common API for global markets via Pico’s network. The infrastructure and technology provider added that the addition of Redline’s revenue stream and client opportunities lent themselves to its growth strategy.

Redline provides ultra-low latency software solutions and common APIs to over 180 global venues serving global banks, quantitative hedge funds, electronic trading firms, exchange-traded fund (ETF) market-makers and exchanges.

“As the trading environment becomes more globalised and continues to produce increasing amounts of data, clients are seeking greater efficiency in market infrastructure services and data consumption,” said Jarrod Yuster, chairman, founder and co-CEO of Pico.

The deal follows Pico’s July 2019 acquisition of Dublin-based Corvil Analytics, which created a combined company operating under the Pico brand servicing more than 400 banks, exchanges, asset managers and technology vendors.

The latest acquisition should strength Pico’s growth strategy by adding Redline’s fully recurring revenue stream and high-margin business to its bottom line, as well as expanding its client base and boosting in-house expertise. Pico also confirmed plans for to continue investment into Redline’s service offering following the acquisition, allowing the brand to deliver real-time and historical normalised financial market data formats via wire protocol or API.

“We have partnered on past initiatives, and we will now be able to access Pico’s globally deployed service organisation, leading analytics and infrastructure footprint to scale our offerings to more geographies,” said Mark Skalabrin, founder and chief executive of Redline.

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Pomraning has been appointed chief revenue officer at Pico where he will be responsible for sales strategy and building on investments to improve client experience across the firm.

Pomraning joins from agency broker ITG where he was global head of product management for quantitative research and technology for two years before his departure last year. Prior to ITG, Pomraning was a managing director and head of equities execution services at JP Morgan in EMEA for six years.

“As a former Pico client, I appreciated having a dynamic and trusted partner who consistently added value through delivering leading technology solutions,” said Pomraning commented on his appointment.

“Since joining Pico, I continue to be impressed by the commitment of our teams in supporting our clients’ business with high-performance technology delivered quickly and accurately.”

Earlier in his career, Pomraning also held roles in sales, product management, and technology at Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital.

Pomraning’s appointment is the latest senior new hire for Pico, which also hired former ITG veteran and chief executive Frank Troise as its co-CEO alongside founder and chairman, Jarrod Yuster.

“I’m delighted to welcome Brian to Pico and further strengthen our leadership team,” commented Yuster. “Brian shares our vision to differentiate with a best-in-class client experience. His deep understanding of capital markets trading and technology and long-standing client relationships will ensure we maintain high levels of client satisfaction.”

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Frank Troise will take on the role as co-CEO of Pico alongside chairman and founder, Jarrod Yuster. He is expected to start on 1 June and has been tasked with building and accelerating expansion of the firm following its recent growth.

Troise most recently served as president and CEO of ITG from January 2016, before the brokerage was acquired by market maker Virtu Financial for $1 billion last year. He joined ITG from JP Morgan where he headed up the bank’s execution services, and also worked as global head of electronic trading at Barclays, and head of US electronic trading at Lehman Brothers.

“As a trusted industry colleague for close to two decades, Frank has demonstrated a relentless focus on stellar client experience along with operational excellence. Frank has a proven track record of building high performance global organisations and will be instrumental in achieving our vision,” said Yuster.

Pico specialises in connectivity, cloud technology, data and analytics, and is privately owned with several major investment banks holding minority ownership in the firm, including Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and UBS.

In July last year, Pico acquired markets technology and analytics provider Corvil to form a combined company that services more than 400 banks, exchanges, asset managers and technology vendors. More recently, Pico also teamed up with Nomura to build the institution a new FX and rates trading platform.

“Through consistently anticipating market requirements and investing in innovative technologies, operational excellence and expanding into new global markets, Pico sets the benchmark for technology services in financial markets,” Troise commented. “Pico plays a significant role in equipping clients with the leading-edge technology solutions required to thrive in financial markets.”

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Pico will build, host and manage a new FX and rates platform for Nomura to accelerate the growth of its global business in these markets.

The Nomura FX trading platform is co-located in data centres based in New Jersey (NY4), London (LD4) and Tokyo (TY3), and the bank stated that the new platform from Pico will allow its clients to benefit from faster transaction times.

“The use of technology is the backbone to enabling business with our customers,” commented Tom Palmer, head of etrading strategy FX at Nomura. “With every upgrade we are able to make we can be confident that our clients will see more competitive pricing and faster execution times.

“In today’s disparate FX markets there are an increasingly large number of liquidity providers that the FX market can turn to and our investment in the infrastructure from Pico shows our continued commitment to the market.”

At the end of October this year Nomura added its foreign exchange algorithms to the BidFX execution management system (EMS) platform proving clients with access to the Tsuwamono suite of algos on BidFX, including five algo trading strategies which aim to provide users with flexibility on executions based on requirements and preferences.

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The acquisition will form a combined company servicing more than 400 banks, exchanges, asset managers and technology vendors. Together, the company will have a workforce of 375 with expertise on machine learning, automation, low-latency technologies and data science.

“Corvil’s reputation is second to none for innovation, quality, and data analytics in the financial markets, and we have come to rely on their data to support mission-critical systems,” said Jarrod Yuster, CEO and founder of Pico.

“Our motivation for acquiring Corvil is based on a commitment to our clients to deliver the industry’s best-in-class analytics and real-time insights. With Corvil, we can deliver full transparency into our clients’ trading and IT operations while addressing the challenges that come with rapid expansion into new global markets.”

Following completion of the deal, the combined company will operate under the Pico brand although the Corvil name will continue to be used for its products and services. Pico said that clients will be able to procure all of Corvil’s products within its global network and infrastructure.

Pico, which specialises in connectivity, cloud technology, data and analytics, is privately owned with several major investment banks holding minority ownership in the firm, including Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and UBS.

“We recognised the promise in Pico’s best-in-class infrastructure services early on, and have invested multiple times over the years,” Jason Sippel, global head of equities at JP Morgan, also commented.

“The strategic rationale for a combination with Corvil’s undisputed leadership in analytics services is persuasive, and we expect it will provide the combined entity with a profound advantage in serving its customers. We look forward to continuing to work closely with Pico, both as an investor and strategic partner.”

The acquisition is expected to close within 30 days, subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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