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The Big Interview:
Peter Maragos
The chief executive of Dash Financial, Peter Maragos, talks to Hayley McDowell about targeting growth in the US
equities market and gives his views on the importance of order routing transparency, as well as the rebate debate.
Hayley McDowell: Dash currently
has significant market share in US
options, but how are you targeting
growth in the US equities market?
Peter Maragos: We’ve always had
a strong equity product – our
platform has been multi-asset since
the beginning – and though options
was where the most opportunities
were for us early on the key themes
of performance, transparency and
configurability, with a superior cus-
tomer service overlay, are the same.
With that said, the market struc-
ture and the trends in equities has
been very different from the options
40 // TheTrade // Winter 2018
business. But the change in the
equities market has certainly become
more rapid, and we’ve seen it with
the shift from active to passive, the
emergence of quant investing, as
well as an increased focus on best ex-
ecution that has been brought about
by MiFID II in Europe. It’s that
heightened focus on best execution
and the need for performance has re-
ally shifted the equities environment
to hit our sweet spot.
HM: MiFID II has had a global impact.
As a US-based agency execution
firm, how has the regulation impact-
ed Dash and its clients?
PM: For us, I would say MiFID II
has had a global impact. A lot of the
hedge funds and asset managers are
global institutions and they’re not
going to have different standards
for different geographies. In this
environment, the highest standards
are going to be what’s used across
the spectrum. You can’t have higher
standards in the US than in the UK
for instance, so there has been a
trickle down in other geographies
in terms of how buy-side firms are
looking at their business and what
they are focused on.