In an effort to boost its institutional presence, Schwab Capital Markets has acquired the quantitative trading business of Epoch Partners, including a team of 19 traders and technology specialists lead by Michael Stewart.
Stewart joins Schwab as senior vice president, electronic trading, and will report to Lon Gorman, president of Schwab Capital Markets.
The move follows yesterday's acquisition of Ameritrade's interest in online investment bank Epoch Partners by Goldman Sachs.
"Many of our efforts at Epoch focused on leveraging Schwab's presence in the secondary marketplace," says Stewart. "By joining forces, we now have a clear mandate to blend our electronic trading platform with Schwab Capital Markets' market making expertise, and the tremendous retail order flow at Charles Schwab & Co., to create new products that benefit institutional and retail customers."
At Epoch, Stewart headed the institutional trading team, and previously served as managing director and head of program trading for Banc of America Securities.