FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Buy-side profile
Spearheading the
evolution of FX trading and
making investment management
a more inclusive and
diverse workplace
Andy Maack
Global Head of FX Trading, Vanguard
Please describe your role and responsibilities within
Vanguard today.
I started at Vanguard about 17 years ago answering telephones
and gradually worked my way through the organisation. I also
held a position as a financial planner advising clients about
retirement plans. After completing my CFA level 1 exam, I
realised I wanted to become a trader and moved from the
retail side of the business to investment management, trading
municipal bonds at the fixed income trading desk.
After trading fixed income for two years, I transitioned to our
equity index group as trader and worked my way to the role of
portfolio manager. Many of our portfolios traded international
stocks, I had to spend a lot of time organizing our FX needs,
which were seen as a necessary evil back then. As a PM, if you
bought Japanese stock for your US$ denominated portfolio,
you needed Yen to settle the trade. I started to focus on how
we traded FX to see if there were better ways than trading
them at the 4PM London Fix. We were already early adopters
of equities algorithms and therefore had the confidence to be
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early adopters of FX trading algorithms. This meant that we
could trade large orders in smaller increments.
Six years ago, we reviewed how Vanguard handles currency
needs throughout the entire organisation and recommended
that the firm consolidate the FX trading desk to take
advantage of liquidity pockets - netting and aggregating
where opportunities exist. This new process enabled the
equities and fixed income portfolio managers to focus more
of their time on investment decisions, which is what they do
best. Subsequently, we created a team of FX traders that were
experts in currency trading. This resulted in an optimised
common approach for trading across the firm. For the last five
years, I have been building and managing that FX trading desk.
To attain 24-hour coverage of the FX market, we have traders in
Melbourne Australia, London, and USA.
My role includes responsibility for all currency needs across
the entire organisation and managing and developing staff
in those three locations. We trade about 2.5 trillion U$ in
currencies a year which means that we have the largest trading
volume remit within Vanguard.
www.buysideintel.com
Summer 2019