[ C O V E R
S T O R Y
|
C AT H Y
G I B S O N ]
[ C O V E R
S T O R Y
|
C AT H Y
G I B S O N ]
We were able to hire on both
the equity and fixed income
sides, which gave me the
opportunity to diversify my
desk in terms of both a gender
and skill set perspective. We
were able to bring in people
with skills that we didn’t have
here before.
n February 2018,
Cathy Gibson
joined Royal Lon-
don Asset Man-
agement (RLAM)
in London to
establish and
lead its new centralised dealing
desk, covering all asset classes, but
primarily focused on equities and
fixed income. The move marked a
significant shift in scale for Gibson,
having previously headed up the
fixed income UK business for DWS
(Deutsche Asset Management),
While the two firms have dif-
ferent resource pools available
to them, the similarities between
the two roles are that Gibson was
handed the responsibility to build
the desk up from the ground on
both occasions and it was the
strength of diversity and spirit of
collaboration within the trading
team that Gibson most wanted to
bring to the RLAM operation.
RLAM already possessed a depth
of experience and skill on the
equities front, so the first challenge
42 // TheTrade // Summer 2019
required to bring the fixed income capabilities up
to the same level, and Gibson says that she was very
conscious to bring as varied a range of skills sets on
board as possible.
“We were able to hire on both the equity and fixed
income sides, which gave me the opportunity to
diversify my desk in terms of both a gender and skill
set perspective,” she says. “We were able to bring in
people with skills that we didn’t have here before.
Being able to watch that merge and integrate over the
last 15 months has been fantastic.”
Gibson believes that the blend of experience the firm
already possessed in conjunction with fresh blood
and skills means the desk is “much stronger now as a
result” and was helped by physically locating both the
equities and fixed income teams in one place. While
the desk is very much a cross-asset dealing operation,
Gibson wants to preserve the individual experiences
and talents that each member of the team brings to the
table.
“We have subject matter expertise and they diversify
across that, so I don’t expect fixed income traders to
be trading equities and vice versa, but a fixed income
trader can trade an equity future as easily as they can a
fixed income future, for example,” she explains.
“There is definitely crossover in terms of what they
can do, but I believe in having that expertise and spe-
cialisation within the trading desk. The challenge is
bringing those together and making sure it works.”
Bringing new talent to the desk has also created
opportunities for RLAM and its trading processes.
Gibson details how one new hire with significant ex-
perience of equity algo trading has been handed a re-
mit to assess the firm’s options in algorithmic trading
and what is available in the market, while another hire
came from a firm which had a high level of segregation
between high- and low-touch trading.
“Using her background and expertise we were able
to introduce low-touch trading to RLAM for the first
time ever,” she says. “We are still at the conservative
stage, it has been tried and tested, and we will roll this
out across all asset types.”
Segregating job roles was also one of the biggest
tasks facing Gibson in the creation of RLAM’s new-
look desk, particularly when trying to foster a culture
of valuing individual skills and ownership of each role
within the team, something that can be a challenge in
what she describes as a “very flat structure”.
That segregation primarily refers to the roles of the
traders and portfolio managers, which Gibson points
out was already in effect before she joined the firm,
but was still a relatively new feature and one that had
not been rolled out across asset classes. Gibson says
that this has now been extended across the desk’s
multiple asset operations and that although one would
expect there to be “bumps in the road”, RLAM en-
countered very few of these obstacles: “That is really
a testament to the traders, but also to the portfolio
managers in their ability to trust
their trades with the people on the
desk,” she says.
Changing relationships
The relationships between buy-
side traders and portfolio manag-
ers has been a shifting dynamic
through increasing use of technolo-
gies on trading desks and changing
market structures, and RLAM is
no different from any of its peers
in this respect. Gibson believes her
own traders and portfolio manag-
ers are particularly close on the
high-touch channels – although
there is of course dialogue for
less liquid-type assets – however,
she sees the low-touch side as the
opposite.
“I actually see there probably
being more and more distance be-
tween the portfolio managers and
cash flow management, small trade
allocations and small futures,” she
explains. “ I see portfolio managers
being very separated from that,
mainly because they don’t need
to be close to it and, ultimately, I
Issue 60 // TheTradeNews.com // 43