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one – from the c-level executives down to the dealers
themselves – all getting on the same page.
James describes 2017 as being “subsumed with MiFID
II”, keeping the business going and the teams focused
while adapting to the incoming wall of regulation, most
of which was focused on the fixed income markets.
Around the second half of 2018 James says he felt that
the firm had its systems bedded in, so that he could
“look up and have the sun on your face.” The time had
come to move on to more exciting work.
“Looking forward, it’s quite nice that there is a differ-
ence governance structure now and making sure that you
adhere to those regulations, but more of my time is spent
doing different things,” he says. “For instance, I sat with
our data scientists recently looking at some data and dis-
cussing how we’d like to analyse it, and two of our dealers
were involved in that. That’s really exciting.”
Getting the dealing team more involved in all aspects
of the desk and technology workflow has been one of
James’ main tasks since joining Pictet, with the objective
of bringing the firm’s investment, dealing and execution
strategies closer together in a multi-faceted approach.
Data plays a huge role in this work and adding people
to Pictet’s trading technology team that are dedicated
to the trading desk is paying dividends. “That has been
really useful because now all of the dealing team are
involved in various different projects, because that
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is where they were driven,” he
explains. “Equities has already been
through this evolution, but fixed
income is kind of at the end of the
beginning of this transition; people
are suddenly realising this is actual-
ly going to change.”
“When we look at the bond market
there’s a level of sophistication and
– no pun intended – maturity coming
to the market.”
James has certainly let his
opinions be known about the use
of certain technologies for fixed
income trading, with transaction
cost analysis (TCA) and execution
management systems (EMS) both
coming in for his criticism.
Taking part in a panel session at
the Fixed Income Leaders Summit
in October last year, James said
that the systems were unneces-
sary in fixed income because they
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