Episode 206: Liquidnet's Simon Maughan

This week on the podcast, Simon Maughan, Liquidnet’s head of trading alpha, joins (3:00-35:30) to discuss the current landscape in the agency-broking space and the buy side’s need for strong analytics in today’s trading environment. Then Wei-Shen and Tony jump back on (35:30) to discuss a documentary that they both watched, and somehow they try to connect it to the world of AML/KYC. (Note: There's a bit of an awkward cut as Wei-Shen and Tony went longer than anticipated talking about a documentary, so we tacked that on at the end.) 3:00 Simon joins the podcast. 7:00 He first talks about the state of agency trading and cost-of-trade issues. 10:30 How have the needs of the buy side changed? 19:00 Over the past few years we’ve seen agency brokers use block trades to drum up business, employ nifty algos to attract clients, while incorporating transaction-cost analysis and other data points as value-adds. Is there a point where the road runs out on what an agency broker can offer? 23:00 He then explains the need to deliver the right information, at the exact point that it is needed, to the right person. 26:00 After the acquisitions of OTAS, Prattle, and RSRCHXchange, what were the greatest challenges in bringing those systems together?   30:00 The world of execution management and analytics is evolving; how can a firm like Liquidnet differentiate itself from the major execution and analytics providers? 33:00 To round things out, Simon talks about some of the lessons he’s learned during the pandemic.