Olivetree has made a number of new hires for its event driven trading team in London, The TRADE can reveal.
David Lackenby has joined as head of event driven sales trading and Mark Brodie has been hired as an event driven sales trader. Both join from Wall Street giant Citi and will be working alongside Tim Caulton. The new hires started this week.
Lackenby previously worked at Market Securities and Cantor Fitzgerald. Brodie was employed by brokers BTIG and United First Partners, and investment banks Jefferies and Bear Stearns, prior to joining Citi.
Event driven trading strategies seek to profit from corporate events, including mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and spin-offs.
Olivetree is expanding its team in London at a time when some firms are trimming headcount in equities. Market maker Winterflood Securities recently cut six trading positions following a 75% drop in annual profits. Citi and Switzerland’s largest bank UBS, also both made cuts to their respective equity divisions in September.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Oliver Dowden, earlier this week said that the UK Government was looking to roll back powers to intervene in company takeovers almost two years after they had been introduced. The National Security and Investment Act came into force in January 2022 and resulted in greater scrutiny of foreign investments in UK companies.
The Olivetree Group was acquired in March last year by London-based trading solutions provider Alvar Financial, as reported by The TRADE. The firm had received a number of other unsolicited offers prior to the closing of the deal with Alvar, and at one point was mooted to merge with New York-based financial services firm StoneX.
Alvar Financial is based in Gibraltar and the City, and provides prime brokerage solutions for institutional investors, hedge funds and family offices. It offers execution and settlement services across global equities, derivatives, and FX.