Tourmaline Partners, LLC, one of the world's leading outsourced trading solutions firms, today announced the hire of Rowley Aird as Managing Director, Europe. Based in London, Aird will support Tourmaline’s continued growth in the EMEA region.
Since the implementation of MiFID II, Tourmaline has seen a marked increase in demand for its services from funds trading in Europe, especially larger firms looking for “supplemental trading”, to expand the reach of their trading operations. With new best execution requirements and increasing costs of compliance, these firms can benefit from Tourmaline’s deep relationships across the sell side and un-conflicted, unbiased approach to the trading lifecycle.
Over his two-decade career in the financial services industry, Aird has served in a number of key roles, most recently as Head of Trading and Execution Services, Europe at CLSA. There, he was responsible for all high- and low-touch offerings, including the trading of APAC equities on behalf of European asset managers and hedge funds. At CLSA, Aird oversaw the firm’s implementation of MiFID II best execution requirements including TCA compliance. Prior to CLSA, Aird was based in Hong Kong and served in a variety of senior sales roles at UBS, Liquidnet and Bloomberg.
“I am thrilled to join Tourmaline Partners,” said Aird. “The Tourmaline team is meeting the needs of an industry undergoing structural change in a space primed for future growth. Tourmaline’s offerings provide so many benefits to the buy-side community - not just for smaller managers who may not have the resources to run their own trading desks, but also larger ones who may leverage our resources opportunistically, given time zone issues or the challenge of maintaining extensive broker lists.”
“Rowley’s deep skill set and years of experience as a senior trader make him an outstanding addition to our Europe team,” said Andrew Walton, Head of European Business at Tourmaline. “An increasing number of fund managers are realizing that outsourced trading firms like Tourmaline can provide benefits of scale and global reach that would take major investments of time and money to replicate internally. Rowley will be instrumental in helping us meet this increased demand while maintaining the high level of service our clients expect.”
Tourmaline Partners provides solutions and expertise to over 300 institutional investment clients ranging from emerging hedge funds to multi-billion-dollar asset managers. Tourmaline’s London office spearheads trading across Europe, eliminating the need for firms to operate a dedicated Europe desk.