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would like to see.
Referencing the TRACE consol-
idated tape for US fixed income
participants that provides a holistic
view of market activity, he declares
that the single greatest requirement
for European markets is aggrega-
tion.
“If you look at the equity markets,
you centralise all the books and
you can get any of the live data
platforms, which you can aggregate
to get a reasonably good view of it
all,” James says.
“With the maturity that I talked
about and that new technology
that’s available now, what’s hap-
pening is that the barrier to entry
collapses. If I go back far enough, to
the late 1980’s on the equities side,
they did 90% of the business on a
principal basis. Now it has turned
on its head and most of its agency
based. Historically fixed income
has been buy and hold, it has not
been high-frequency, and person-
ally I don’t believe that returns. So
aggregation of information is very
important and not at a massive
price.”
Watershed moments
As you would expect from the
recipient of The TRADE’s buy-side
lifetime achievement award, James
can boast of a varied career across
both the buy- and sell-sides, with
“I like change; any job I have done
I didn’t want to just join, grab the
handle and keep turning it.”
responsibilities that have taken him
all over the world.
Having first entered the financial
industry at the age of 19, James
acknowledges the first major wa-
tershed moment of his career was
38 // TheTrade // Spring 2019
when he was with Phillips & Drew Fund Management,
part of UBS, responsible for its derivatives, program
trading and international trading.
“When Philipps & Drew, Brinson Partners and UBS
Global Asset Management merged I was asked to go
out to Asia-Pacific to do an evaluation on their dealing,”
he recalls. “I said sure, why not, I had never written a
report like that before. I didn’t realise until much, much
later that was my job application.”
James took on the role of head of pan-Asian trading at
UBS GAM and spent the next five years working across
desks in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, expanding
his remit to include strategic elements – hiring people,
getting technology on the desk, getting processes writ-
ten and sign off from regulators – that are now his daily
workload at Pictet.
“Going to Asia was a real watershed moment for me
because it moved me from being just operational to
be being tactical as well,” he explains. “I was okay as a
dealer – I wasn’t knocking the lights out, but I enjoyed
it, and it was clearly a very different world to what it is
now – so the great part for me was having that new, tac-
tical element; but even more so was the little epiphany
when I realised how much I enjoyed it.”
The other career moment he highlights is when James
was headhunted by Fortis Investment Management as
its global head of dealing for the newly-merged entity,
following the deal between ABN and Bank of Scotland.
He was charged with creating a cohesive dealing set-up
across 16 global desks and around 70 dealers, and would
go on to introduce a global trading platform for the firm.
“What comes back to me is that the management had
confidence in me,” he says. “It wasn’t about cutting
costs – there was some collateral as people left the
business which wasn’t great – but it was an opportunity
to make things the way I wanted, which took about a
year and a half.”
James says that those two stand-out moments of his
career have brought into focus what we truly enjoys
about his work; embracing the change and new experi-
ences. He says that he has enjoyed every organisation he
has worked with, a typically neutral statement, but one
that he stands by as true, and that any chance to usher
in new ideas is one he is ready to take on.
“I think it’s that I have met so may really interesting
people and been exposed to a lot of ideas, thoughts and
opportunities that I honestly never thought I would
have,” he says. “I like change; any job I have done I
didn’t want to just join, grab the handle and keep turn-
ing it.”