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With an emphasis on the importance of his team , Battams explains there are subject matter experts that focus on specific areas , whether that be specialists on rebalance activity or a more quantitative skillset that is employed across the desk .
“ Each trader has a high degree of core skills and competency that allows us to move flow around the desk as required ,” he adds . “ Every year we execute more and more in terms of notional and orders so the focus for us is scale , efficiency , resiliency and risk management across the platform .”
As for many buy-side houses , 2020 presented a huge challenge for BlackRock , but Battams says the firm ’ s investment in technology and its platform over the years has paid dividends . Given its size and resources , the asset manager uses a lot of in-house systems and its flagship Aladdin platform is at the heart of trading workflows . The EMEA equity desk at BlackRock executes roughly 12,000 orders a day , meaning electronic connectivity is essential in being able to handle flow and risk effectively .
With Aladdin as its order management system ( OMS ), orders are sent to the platform electronically . There are robust portfolio manager and trader protocols in place that govern how portfolio managers submit orders to the traders and how they are tagged to ensure the trading desk can manage the vast number of orders systematically .
“ Looking at the benchmark , the aim is to achieve what the fund and trade objectives are ,” Battams explains . “ There is no manual keying of orders or trade information , which allows the
trader to concentrate fully on the execution rather than on processing . Straight through connectivity is key for the team and gives traders the bandwidth to focus on execution and sourcing liquidity .”
BlackRock has its own transaction cost analysis ( TCA ) system that traders can use to interrogate data across various lenses and benchmarks for cost evaluations . The traders also benefit from a global trading research team that is dedicated to TCA given the huge amount of data that flows into BlackRock on a daily basis .
“ I guess that ’ s one of the benefits we have as BlackRock , we have so much data and we are ready and able to drill down to define data-driven
22 // TheTRADE // Summer 2021