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itadel Securities, the market
making business of Ken
Griffin’s giant hedge fund, is
a frequent poacher of the best tal-
ent in the industry. It is constantly
making moves to acquire the best
personnel in technology and trad-
ing as it looks to compete with the
top investment banks.
It was therefore no surprise that
last year it hired electronic trading
expert Nicola White as it new chief
operating officer for fixed income,
currencies and commodities (FICC).
White, whose career prior to
joining Citadel Securities spanned
13 years entirely at Morgan Stanley,
has become a leader in combining
trading and technology together,
two business areas which have
traditionally remained separate.
After graduating from the Uni-
versity of Waterloo with a bach-
elor’s degree in Mathematics and
Computer Science, she enrolled in
the co-op programme and interned
at Morgan Stanley, joining full time
in 2003.
“Within a couple of years of grad-
uation, I had developed real-time
mortgage pricing software and
launched an electronic trading
desk,” she describes. “The breadth
of experience I gained during my
time at the University of Waterloo
catalysed how fast I could bring
extensive value to a firm and the
industry at large.”
In 2005 she was asked to move
onto the trading desk, becoming a
US Treasuries trader, despite her
speciality being in software.
Her role within the bank became
amplified with the onset of Dodd-
Frank, which shifted trading of
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derivatives and other asset classes
from the trading floor onto elec-
tronic platforms. After being asked
to head up its electronic trading
and market structure team for US
rates trading in 2010, White decid-
ed to utilise her experience on the
technology front and apply it to the
fixed income world.
“Starting in technology and mov-
ing into trading really set the base
for me to move into an electronic
trading role, and to combine the
technological and trading aspects
of the business. That is where I
have focused my career over the
last six to seven years,” she says.
“Prior to the financial crisis, there
was not a natural combination of
those two elements in the fixed
income industry. Technology plays
of desk becoming more involved
in front-and back-office technol-
ogies in order to streamline their
processes and build sophisticated
trading tools,” she adds.
In 2014 White became global
head of electronic rates trading,
and then a year later global head
of electronic fixed income trading,
in which she led the bank’s trading
activities in order to keep up with
the Dodd-Frank landscape.
“After Dodd-Frank, dealers had to
move quoting and trading systems
from pricing within minutes to
pricing within seconds through
a SEF (swap execution facility),
which was no small task. Having to
look at the whole chain and figure
out how to take each piece down
the sub-second was a massive para-
“We have been able to use the work we did in the
swaps space as our foundation for this build as
we think there are many synergies between off-
the-run Treasuries and swaps.”
a more critical role in enabling and
driving trading now than it has
ever before.”
According to a recent report from
Greenwich Associates, the number
of investors trading fixed income
electronically has grown year-on-
year, with 46% now stating they
trade at least some of their volume
electronically.
“People in fixed income are being
more technically savvy and inter-
ested in technology. For example,
we are seeing traders and heads
digm shift for banks and other mar-
ket participants,” White explains.
A perfect pairing
It was this rapid rise through
Morgan Stanley’s hierarchy that
also coincided with the expansion
of Citadel Securities.
The result of Dodd-Frank meant
that new non-bank market makers
with more advanced, flexible
technology could enter the space to
replace banks that were shrinking
their business. Citadel Securities