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Phillipe Buhannic,
the architect of CSFB's cutting edge electronic trading
technology, Prime Trade, has detailed his
plan to develope that concept further at TradingScreen,
the new venture he became involved with following his
sudden departure from Swiss investment bank (see FOW
June).
The reasons for Buhannic's departure from CSFB now seem clear.
Three month ago, the then global head of listed derivatives approached
his bosses with the idea of turning PrimeTrade, which he asserts
is still a full two years ahead of the competition, into a multi-dealer
execution and clearing system.
"At the time there was a certain inability to focus on this
idea," Buhannic says."As a strategic question,
it is clear the platform should be multi-dealer. We
have created a bit of a 'monster' in PrimeTrade, in
that it was more and more difficult to keep growing
and developing it within a traditional organization
- it needed to be spun-off, and the firm was just not
interested."
Instead Buhannic joined up with a team of first-rate programmers,
whose ideas matched his closely, to form TradingScreen (see last
month's 'Crew cuts'), where he is chief executive officer. Buhannic
is adamant that TradingScreen, a Delaware incorporated firm, is
an Internet financial service business and not a software firm.
"Most platforms start from a dealer point of view and replicate
traditional organizational splits by product. And they focus on
execution," he says. "The problem is that the plethora
of platforms in each area is leading to a very complicated world
by adding a layer of technology fragmentation. From the feedback
we got from customers at CSFB it was clear they wanted two things:
the ability to send the trade to other broker dealers, for example
JP Morgan or Goldman's, and a simple multi-dealer transaction processing
back end - that is one connection, but not just for execution, for
the back end as well."
On the level
TradingScreen, which is currently privately financed by its founders
and a handful of " private partners", in Buhannic's words,
hopes to start with a multi-product platform by the end of the year.
Beginning with listed derivatives, equities, foreign exchange and
US Treasury bons, TradingScreen aims to "create the right level
of access for clients to firms, and for firms to clients,"
step-by-step.
The team
There are 16 employees at TradingScreen at present. Given Buhannic's
goal of "being untouchable, technology-wise", almost all
of those are programmers or technology experts. The team includes
Joseph Ahearn, TradingScreen's chief technology officer, who left
CSFB just before Buhannic, where he had developed PrimeTrade. Six
employees are already in a TradingScreen Tokyo office. In London,
where a TradingScreen offshoot was incorporated last month, there
are already two signed up, albeit with no offices for the to work
from yet.
In what might have been a thinly-veiled reference to former colleague
John Yuill, who headed prime brokerage sales at CSFB an is undertaking
a similar project dubbed Exchangeflow out of Dublin - but for futures
markets only (see also last month's "Crew cuts') - Buhannic
repeatedly stresses the overriding importance of technical proficiency
and quality of service over sales skill.
Kamal Abed |
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