Edouard Petitcollot
Candriam has overhauled its global trading structure in a bid to refocus its attention on more complex and high touch trading strategies, The TRADE can reveal.
The asset manager will now operate with two specialised trading groups, one dedicated to equities, consisting of a team of three traders and headed up by Fabien Orève, and one dedicated to fixed income, consisting of four traders and headed up by Amaury Van Ruymbeke.
Edouard Petitcollot will lead the operation as global head of trading. Fabien Orève will also serve as his deputy alongside his equities focused role.
Amaury van Ruymbeke
According to an internal memo penned by Petitcollot and seen by the TRADE, the restructure is in response to increased demand for more complex and high touch protocols and strategies across high yield and emerging market bonds, small and mid-cap equities, long and short equity, credit strategies, equity block and fixed income portfolio trading.
The new structure is designed to create better proximity between Candriam’s traders and portfolio managers across its branches to offer a more specialised trading service.
“These changes, underpinned by a structured approach, illustrates Candriam’s commitment to aligning its trading desk with the evolving demands of the market,” said Petitcollot in the memo.
“We are confident that this new organisational structure will not only enable us to navigate the dynamic trading landscape efficiently but also foster greater innovation and collaboration across our teams.”
Fabien Orève
The decision follows the merging of the asset manager’s legal subsidiaries in Brussels, London and France to create one Luxembourg-headquartered global trading firm in July last year. The move was designed to create better efficiencies and cost savings across the business. The former subsidiaries are now branches.
Historically, Candriam’s Paris office has specialised in illiquid assets such as high yield and convertible bonds, while its London office has primarily dealt with the emerging markets.
“We’d like to be at the forefront of this new generation of multi asset and get it closer to investment needs and evolution,” Orève told The TRADE.
“High touch trading can be renewed. It’s always been considered old fashioned but that is no longer the case. It’s been reformatted to hybrid and we want to push this new concept through our new organisation focused on investment needs with a high touch flavour in the very strong technological environment.”