Buy-side Perspectives Issue 11 | Page 13

PREPARING ABERDEEN STANDARD INVESTMENTS FOR A NEW MARKET STRUCTURE POST MIFID II Derek McCole Global Co-Head of Investment Execution, Aberdeen Standard Investments K&KGC caught up with Derek McCole, to get his perspectives, after he spent just over a year in his new global co-head trader role in Edinburgh transitioning from Singapore as the previous “Head of Equity Dealing ‐ Asia Pacific” at Aberdeen Standard Investments. As expected, Derek gave us interesting insights into the transition of roles between the vastly different regions and a clear perspective of the challenges ahead. The new global role W e have a multi-asset desk in Asia, with multi-asset experience. Having been away from the UK for 5 years there was certainly a need to get back up to speed with the UK and the European capital markets which have changed drastically with the Winter 2017 regulatory changes from 2011-2016. In a global role, you need to streamline processes and procedures and encourage consistency across the globe as much as possible. Inevitably there are some regions where this is not possible, where local jurisdictions and regulations dictate www.buysideintel.com that you have to do some things in a certain way. For example, we have to have locally based traders on the ground in Jakarta and Taiwan due to regulatory requirements. These types of local nuances mean that you cannot centralise everything as local regulation takes priority. 13