What do you think were the key drivers behind Redburn Atlantic’s win at Leaders in Trading New York?
Redburn Atlantic’s thoughtful approach to the market and experienced trading team mean we have long been recognised as leaders in agency execution. In turn, this has seen us develop into an important trading partner to some of the biggest asset managers globally. Since our integration with Rothschild & Co, we have invested heavily in the US segment of the business, most notably through a merger with Atlantic Equities in 2023. This investment has allowed us to substantially increase our US stock research coverage, as well as enhance our US execution platform via targeted technological enhancements and several important hires.
In doing so, we have created a unique value proposition. The combination of differentiated research (we are one of the few firms on the street who engage in deep dive research), alongside a top tier US high touch trading desk, complemented by an award winning algo suite, has proven extremely valuable to our clients. In our evolution, we have found that customers want the best of both worlds when it comes to execution – access to liquidity alongside market leading client service. By leveraging our deeply experienced team, we have achieved that.
In the US, we have piloted this by focusing on SMID biotech in both research and trading, and it has paid off in ways that have exceeded our wildest expectations. The number of stocks we have traded has effectively tripled since 2021. In 2024, we nearly doubled US execution revenues year-on-year and have added 70 new accounts for trading, as customers are proactively engaging us to access our research and liquidity.
What do you expect your biggest drivers of growth to be going forward?
We think that the agency brokerage model is vital to the industry. While larger firms have conflicting priorities, we always focus entirely on improving execution outcomes for our clients. Channeling that energy not only provides a better result to the client in the short term, but also gives us capacity to innovate and drive new ways of trading. For instance, we have launched new tools that incorporate some of the lessons we have gleaned from our European platform regarding liquidity seeking and best practices. Although the two markets are different each with their own idiosyncrasies, there are best practices beneficial to clients. One example is our approach to venues in which we expose pockets of liquidity that we feel are under-utilised by our peers.
Further, expanding the sales and trading team and investing in technology in the US has allowed us to maintain the same premium service and level of innovation while reaching more clients. We have seen an exponential influx of new clients across Europe and the US and expect this trend to continue. As such, this will give us scope to increase our natural block crossing ratio, which currently sits around mid-teens %, above industry norms.
Lastly, alongside the increased flow from our buy-side clients, as the public equity arm of Rothschild & Co., we are also working more with corporates, many of whom have commented on our superior service and execution. This not only allows us to improve the outcomes for the corporates themselves but gives Redburn Atlantic access to more unique liquidity which we can make available to our clients.
How is the trading process changing and what is Redburn Atlantic doing to accommodate this?
The scope and pace of change is challenging. Clients are constantly looking to access more liquidity, while simultaneously reducing costs and avoiding slippage. We are focused on evolving our approach and challenging ourselves to find smart ways to capture liquidity, expand our scope of services, and excel in client support. We are conscious that everyone is under cost pressure, and clients need a well-rounded resource that includes execution quality and service.
This dynamic presents the challenge as well as the opportunity. On one hand, clients need to automate, which requires an analytical approach and favours the best statistical outcome over a multitude of orders. On the other hand, buy-side traders are facing the challenge of reduced bandwidth but increased expectations of price improvement alpha. Thus, they need to know they can trust Redburn Atlantic as their high touch broker to make thoughtful, intelligent decisions regarding their more difficult orders.
To that end, our algorithmic services team can quickly and efficiently build bespoke algos for those looking to target specific benchmarks, while the high touch team can provide intuition, oversight, and guidance around the more nuanced orders. Finally, our analytics team can offer consultancy for those looking to understand the data in more depth.
Naturally, we are extremely grateful for this award and acknowledgement. Overall, our mission remains to provide firms with the best outcome for their orders. How we achieve that goal continues to evolve and requires the right mix of technology, service, and people. We hope this award shows that we have established an exceptional combination of these three and are best positioned to continue to add value for our clients going forward.
