Traders leaving Van der Moolen
60 comments / August 2, 2009
The Financieele Dagblad this weekend opened with a story on the frontpage of traders leaving the firm in vast numbers. A third of the derivative traders left the company in Amsterdam as a cut in their bonus deal wasn’t acceptable for them. Their London office saw ten traders leaving the firm two months ago for the same reason. Reading through the comments earlier on this website the news was whispering in the air for some time.
More than just bonus cut
In public opinion receiving a bonus while working in the financial industry is esteemed at the same moral level as molesting little children : evil. Leaving your company because the bonus isn’t sufficient is even worse. Guess there’s a little more going on than just a simple bonus deal. Comments are open for suggestions.
financial investment enterprise without access to retail/public or state money has full right to renumerate their employees at whatever level it pleases. there is no moral attachment to that.
it was banks, who in contrary channeled public/state money into investment power game and created leverage loop. this happened because of their bonus scheme (which encouraged ungrounded ambitions of Tops) and which was amplified with ability to create leverage (print money).
In general this difference is hard to explain to outsiders.
I assume only the best performing traders will have left?
Does VDM have any cash left? 12m operational loss, a possible 35m impairment on the (immaterial) assets and most profitable traders leaving the firm doesn't make the future very seem very bright. What are the odds on this firm surviving the rest of the year?
At least one experienced trader stays at VDM.
experienced =! best (or good) performing…
ARGHH!! CAN..NOT..COMMENT. MARKET..SENSITIVE..INFORMATION. AAHHH!!
best depends what is left behind.
Will be very hard for VDM to attract new traders, since the company does not stick to its bonus deal!!!
its not bout money but principles…
we will not respect what is in the contracts – that makes it all clear 🙂
how obvious that this was going to happen!!!! what about all the 'talked about bonus payments' that were mentioned in the last blog on vdm. they were terrible traders on the floor, and nothing has changed. bringing in rubbish like curvalue has just added to the mess. you could write a book on this company and 'how not to trade and manage a trading business' A COMEDY OF ERRORS
If these guys are terrible traders, they wouldn't leave..
they would leave if they know that the ship is about to sink….
If the ship sinks, the remaining traders will get fine unemployment benefits..
stupid managers are ruining this company, the traders are performing very well…..what VDM needs is good managers
What is the offer in the 1 euro put in VDM
Are Superfund a ponzi scheme….
Extraordinairy activity in the VDM options. Someone bought the march 2010 1.20 – 1.80 callspread. Without hedge. Sellers had to buy a lot of shares and boosted the shareprice.
Oh, I forgot to mention : size was 8750…
im still looking for an offer in the 1 euro put…….
There are offers in the screen for the 1 euro put, so lift them over there if you need 'm..
Better yet: I'm 1 euro on the offer. any size, any expiration! Be quick, before I change my mind!
the repo in the options market is just ridiculous, I see this share going up 100% in a covering of shorts position.
Does it make sense for Euronext and Eurex to have options in a 50 M company?
c'mon… start thinking
traders there are OK, rest is not
and would you stay not being paid bonus for last year, with shitty base salary and absolutelly not knowing what is going to happend next?
bullshit
kudos +1 for August 3, 2009 11:38 PM 😉
They left because of the sick-building-syndrome..
thats the same for traders at imc and all options: the company is rubbish and so are the bonuses in the best options trading environment from the last 15 years!
"best trading enviroment of the last 15 years",not since june,unless you are working in a bank with a lot of flow!!!!!, right now is the best enviroment for the rubbish bank prop traders, short vega long stock,it is the only thing they know,or sometimes even worst…do you know guys that the trader that fuck up 1 or 2 Bn in Vw at Credit Suisse london was the same one that fuck it up Altana in DBK?
Is that true about the Altana / VW trader? That guy must have a serious edge..
seriously? how do these guys keep getting employed?????
last year was the best trading environment for 15 years. mako made over 200m euros from market making. drw also cleaned up, and so did liquid
yes last yr was, but conditions have been awful since May with the vol only going one way & general lack of volume in the options…tough conditions for marketmakers
i agree – i think local firms are happy to break even this year
who is mako and who is drw?
can't believe porsche fucked up on the VW cornering business in the end btw.
MAKO and Liquid are well known UK based market makers. Don't know about DRW, but guess it's another one.
DRW are American
mako sold 49% of their business to a private equity group for $400m, 2 years ago. probably the best market maker out there.
the best offer on which they've been lifted you mean?
Where is "Altana/VöW" guy now ?
thought Close brothers (a merchant bank) bought the 49% stake in Mako rather than a private equity group
close brothers did buy the stake in mako i believe. they have a private equity vehicle
Paul Britton strikes again
I thought the VOW Altana guy was Wisey?
Van der Moolen Holding requests surceance
see http://www.euronext.com/trader/companynews/companyNews-2495-EN-NL0000370179.html?selectedMep=2&docid=758961
The buyer of 8770 call spreads without delta hedge is fucked. So is the seller, who hedged the affair with long delta's..
They want to sell off part of VDM? Perhaps Jacobs will step in as the white knight? He likes failures. He has to drive down his own valuation before next year when the traders will cash out their shares. How better to do that than buy another loser?
who would even think about buying vdm…
who would even think of buying all options for that matter…. 🙂
Administrators have been called in.
over 100 yr old company ran into the ground in less that 9 months, thats a good effort!
thats the opposite to all options:
a 9 month old company, run into the ground in 100 days 🙂
haha good one…is all options really in that bad of shape?
I am an Ex VDM employee. Our department was made redundant in Dec 07, mostly due to VDM trying to with hold bonuses. This was well before the more recent media sensation around bonuses.
The source of the real issues behind the collapse of VDM surrounds the previous CEO. The company has been slowing falling apart ever since Richard den Drijver became CEO shortly after VDM purchased his company Curvalue. It was a reverse takeover of the worst kind, the purchase added little value (primarily purchased for their software asset (Onlinetrader) which was later scrapped). The pseudo empire that was subsequently built by Richard quickly came crashing down after escapades into online dealing, spread betting and even an attempt to become a commercial bank! A far cry from the old core business of traders as liquidity providers.
As far as most of us were concerned, Richard den Drijver was a crook right from the start. How he convinced the board to purchase Curvalue for €50m I'll never know. I believe the finger can be squarely pointed at him over the miss management, the misery endured by the ex employees and the eventual collapse of VDM.
BTW
VDM filed for bankcruptcy today:
http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/dutch-news/Van-der-Moolen-seeks-bankruptcy-protection_55328.html
well it was a mistake of the old vdm management buying curvalue!!! they were the worst trading group on the exchange floor – absolutely clueless. as for their management skills, i dont know but can only imagine…
How is it that a bankrupt stock can still be traded on the exchange?
It is sad to see a 100 year old trading firm going down.
It is fasinating to see that Richard den Drijver and his advisor Hans Kroon were able to burn over a € 100 mln in free cash, which was in the company available, in less then 2 years, in the US people go to jail for this.
It is interesting to see what the next steps of the dutch regulator will be?
lol, to the ex-vdm employee, to be honest VDM missed the step to electronic trading totally and had no idea what it was doing afterwards, buying Curvalue was another mistake they made but before that VDM was not playing any role in trading anywhere, it was just an icon sitting on shareholders money and burning it, there were no good traders only people that were doing directional gambling
US was even worse it was loosing money by the day, again it was not prepared when the exchange moved to the hybrid model, the so called traders were again directional gamblers, if people really understand the workings of the old NY model than you know you don't need trading skills, you just take commission based on traded volume which is not generated by the trader but by the market, even the hybrid model is a political model doomed to fail.
Richard sells his VDM stake.
http://www.fd.nl/artikel/12263097/oud-topman-moolen-verkoopt-belang
Nice timing.
we used to call den drijver – the van driver
he used to run round london and con everyone – in an old van
i met him and he was a skillful hypnotist-
he would talk a lot but not say much
God he was a bore!!
he taught paul daniels and paul mckenna- the dark skills of deep hypnosis …
curvalue what a company – it nearly brought bank of america
but buffet thought den drijver was a comedian so stayed away…
obvious – the van driver rules the world !!!!
Den Drijver driving a van, that is obviously a lie. We all know he charged VDM half a million euros per year for the taxi services he (and Hans K.) consumed.