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- when looking at the setup of having specialists in place for the individual roles - why it was important for us to have this middle-office , or trading- and regulatory services as we call it , team in place which is directly connected to the trading team ,” he says . “ It ' s important that you have a unit which by definition is not allowed to trade because when dealing with compliance there could be a potential conflict of interest .”
Multi-asset above all else No team at Union focuses on one asset class specifically , instead playing host to a handful of individuals who each have a specialism in one . “ It ’ s important to maintain the high level of specialist knowledge we have built over the last couple of years , so we have not thrown away our USPs we have created in equities , fixed income , derivatives , and in FX ,” says Hock .
Union went fully multi-asset in 2015 combining its equities and derivatives team with its fixed income and FX desk following the arrival of Hock as its head of trading in the year prior . Hock , who joined Union having previously worked on the sell-side in sales trading , set up a hedge fund and led derivatives proprietary trading at JP Morgan , was multi-asset by nature even then .
He explains that while the asset classes are inherently different , they have similarities across regulation , liquidity and technology which mean there are efficiencies that can be achieved by combining them all under one desk . Similarities , for example , between how to manage illiquid paper in fixed income such as emerging markets bonds or high
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