Hans Pieterse new CEO of TOM
Hans Pieterse will be the new CEO of the option exchange TOM. When Willem Meijer announced to step down, the speculation about his successor began. Interesting to see Hans Pieterse returning to the industry. He’s an expert in the derivative trading industry, has a great network and rich experience as manager.
Optiver veteran, loaded
Hans Pieterse is a long time Optiver veteran. Nicknamed “Lampje“, he joined Optiver in the early nineties. Not a co-founder, but definitely a shareholder. He was Managing Director of Optiver Europe and head of market structure. As an early shareholder and a career of 20 years with the firm, Pieterse is loaded (50 million bid).
Hans Pieterse is still shareholder of Optiver. This could be seen as a small conflict of interest, with respect to the other shareholders of TOM. However, as Hans Pieterse is widely respected in the industry. The other shareholders (IMC, Nasdaq, ABN AMRO) are probably fine with his ownership of Optiver shares.
Resigned after exit of Van der Kruk
Officially, Pieterse left Optiver in March 2015. Optiver’s CEO Paul Hilgers was refreshing the management at the firm. The old guard were shown the door. Also the CEO of Optiver Europe, Edwin “Joop” van der Kruk, had to go. Hans Pieterse resigned, because he “didn’t have the commitment to go through a process of change at Optiver following the departure of Edwin“. Full quotes in FOW($).
Edwin van der Kruk was succeeded by Jan Bomaars. Bomaars earlier worked 21 years for Goldman Sachs. The CEO position for Optiver APAC in Sydney is still vacant, after the departure of Luke McElnea.
Fenix One
Small other news. The rebels from Flow Traders in Singapore, Sjak Kuipers en Reymond Tse, are building a new firm. But the name was secret. Suddenly, it appears the name of their ETF trading company is Fenix One. And of course, they are hiring.
ABN AMRO Clearing CEO
The CEO of ABN AMRO Clearing, Marcel Jongmans, switched to Flow Traders. It’s difficult to find out who will succeed Jongmans. At first, Jan Bart de Boer seemed a likely candidate to take over the helm at AACB. But that’s definitely not going to happen. Probably, it’s going to be someone from outside the bank.
Is (((Daniel Weinberg))) going to be the Optiver Asia Pacific chief?
Chances of fenix one surviving the first 5 years?
very high
I was having a coffee at Ansterdam Centraal the other day and I overheard a conversation saying that Joop was going to become 2IC at TOM and oversee IT, accounting, HR etc
So one thing I dont understand….Opiver has all these guys with a lot of money and they were not even the founders. How come IMC does not have the same? Opiver seems to be clearly superior to IMC, no?
yes, Optiver is clearly superior to IMC, just look at their results to see why.
It probably has to do with the fact that Optiver founders are less selfish (they share profits with partners, while IMC does not (consistently, through a partner program).
Say what you want about IMC, but the structure has certainly worked out better for Rob Defares than if he would hold 10% of a company that is an profitable as Optiver. In the end he comes out ahead, so he has made the right decisions along the way.
He has come out ahead by being selfish
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/high-speed-trader-imc-buys-115500480.html
If you had to pick between an offer:
FlowTraders or Optiver
Salary
Career opportunities and ability to stay and not get fired
Type of work
I’d pick Optiver (specifically the Sydney office). Salary isn’t competitive, but the office is over-staffed, so as long as never ask for a bonus (get what you’re given) and you’re generally better than half the people there you’ll never be on the chopping block. Also there’s heaps of on site perks and amenities.
Generally speaking most of the asians in the office are as cold as fish doing their 9-5 and getting out early, but the rest of the people are really fun to work with.
Thank you for your reply.
What do you mean the salary is not competitive?
I am a bit worried about getting hacked. On LinkedIn I rarely come across former flow traders employees, but I do see many ex Optiver people. Also at flow traders the people seem to have more fun.
I would suggest that you don’t listen to advice from the comment section
I would also suggest that if you were good enough to get job offers from these firms you wouldn’t be here asking for advice
As far as compensation and bonus structure for trader and strategy research roles Optiver is very competitive with regards to its competitors IMC, Virtu, Liquid, SIG so on.
However when it comes to software development roles (strategy dev, connectivity), support (dev ops), QA/testing, DBs, the salaries provided are average to below average when compared to other MMs or even other financial concerns in the region.
Also if internal profit targets aren’t met, regardless of how amazingly profitable the office has been, the bonus pool for the mentioned previous roles (dev, support, qa) is either greatly reduced or removed altogether, though the traders bonus pool is very rarely affected.
Another thing to notice is that the Optiver trader employment contracts define the term bonus, whereas contracts for developers, support etc roles use the term “discretionary bonus”. In Australia at least those two terms imply different obligations the employer has to the employee. In the latter the employer has no obligation to provide a bonus even if the employee’s performance is noted as being excellent. So you could end up doing 13hr days and some weekends and then be told at the end of the reporting year that it was all for nought.
IMC on the other hand, has excellent compensation packages for all groups, traders devs etc however they run very lean and suffer no fools. Turn over isn’t high, because they’re very selective, but if you’re in a slump for more than a quarter you could be looking at an early exit. The lean aspect also means you’ll have to wear many hats and be involved in many different aspects of the trading process, so people that like to build self contained silos will most likely not do well at IMC.
IMC for example very rarely rehires employees that left the company for competitors, where as on the other hand Optiver is more than happy to take back productive and competent candidates, even years after they left for competitors, so it’s a great place to wait out a recession or a down turn, be able to pay the bills and prep for the next chapter.
“I am a bit worried about getting hacked. On LinkedIn I rarely come across former flow traders employees, but I do see many ex Optiver people. Also at flow traders the people seem to have more fun.” Flow traders is 11 years old, Optiver 32.
Thanks for replying all!
Yes Optiver is older. However I meant getting hacked after 1,2, or 3 years. That seems to be quite prevaileant with Optiver and not so much with flowtraders.
ANONYMOU$
SEPTEMBER 29, 2016 AT 10:47 PM
Thank you very much for providing your insight!!!
ANONYMOU$
SEPTEMBER 29, 2016 AT 10:47 PM
Anonymou$ has some good points but is wrong about others too. There are no separate trader or dev profit pools at Optiver, it’s all part of a global profit pool. The variable pay model is predictable (especially compared to firms like IMC) for individuals. All variable pay is always discretionary (otherwise it wouldn’t be variable) but is very unlikely to be zero unless you’ve underperformed tremendously or the firm made a loss (never happened). Optiver remains a demanding place to work, but isn’t necessarily cut throat. The idea is really to create a fair and collaborative environment to have great talent excel together.
I would be wary of starting at a company where the stock price recently dropped quite a bit lower than the IPO price
So I guess you never would have taken a job at Facebook post its IPO? badooooink…
@ ANONYMOUS September 28 7:42PM and September 29 9:48AM.
Traders at Optiver get chopped all the time. There are only about 60 traders in the Sydney office, yet they take in about a dozen every year (combining start of year and mid year intakes). Average stint is clearly not 10 years is it.
Many grads never make it a year to see a bonus, and experienced traders leave or get fired because of bonus issues, and if management doesn’t see you as exceptional then they’d rather have a newer trader who won’t complain about bonus (yet) replace you. Of the 9 graduates who started at the beginning of this year hired to be screen traders, only 5 were left are 6 months. I wonder how many will reach 1 year. Last years survival rate was slightly better, year before that was much much worse. Does that sound cut throat to you?
New hires sometimes think a shorter training program is a pro (“Ooh you get to trade real money sooner, that’s exciting, I can’t wait!”) but really it’s a con. They want to invest minimal time and training into you before you are expected to consistently produce profits after only 3 months, and if you can’t do that then you’re gone. I can’t say anything concrete about Flow, but their longer training program will likely give you a better shot of grasping all the skills you need and shows a commitment to you. IMC’s training goes longer than Optiver’s but not 6 months like Flow’s, their training is rigorous and as people have mentioned above, they are selective with their hires but do a good job of training and keeping them around, as opposed to taking in a whole bunch and keeping a few.
Not that many people get fired at Optiver. Most decide to leave themselves. Either because it’s not the kind of work they want to do, because they want a change of scenery, because they think they’re brilliant and are not paid sufficiently (only to find out that somewhere else their pay doesn’t even get remotely close to what they got paid at Optiver), or because they have made so much they don’t need to stay until they finally get their long service leave. If after 10 years as a trader at Optiver you haven’t made enough to retire, then either you’ve got a lavish lifestyle, or you weren’t such a brilliant trader after all.
@8:16 pm
Or they realize they can make way much more operating their own MM, examples: Tibra, Autumn Compass
Thank you for answering again. This whole thing of two sided opinions is quite destructive to ones (mine) optimism lol. Especially since it seems your first choice has to be right, as a lateral is really hard if you can’t even stay for more than a year at a company
I thought Optiver would be the best choice, given to the opportunities. But it also seems like a more high risk choice.
Life really is like Finance 101: high expected return comes with high risk. If you don’t like risk, I suggest you become a civil servant.
It’s amazing how these commenters have the inside on these trading companies
My advice is don’t believe it, it’s all hearsay and bs
Is it really amazing that some of the people who visit a blog about Dutch based trading firms are people who work at Dutch based trading firms? This isn’t exactly a general interest topic.
It’s also amazing that most of the comments relate to the other offices of these firms
Equally amazing is how the commenters know about 2 different firms
Says to me the commenter is actually a recruiter.
@3:59 pm
Is it really that hard to believable?
Is it that hard to believe that an MM will try their utmost best to reduce the amount of time, money, resource they invest in training their traders?
Is is that hard to believe that an MM will value people more that have access to the details/IP of their trading strategies than those that are designated to build the systems that execute or support them?
Is is that hard to believe than the owners of an MM will try their utmost best not to payout on agreed upon bonuses or in other words: to pay as little as they can get away with?
Is it that hard to believe that MMs are so confident in the availability of the talent pools in their local vicinities that they feel free to let go of any personal on a whim, knowing they can be easily and cheaply replaced?
Is it that hard to believe that the owners of an MM will try to run their ship as lean and as tight as is possible so as to make as much profit as is possible for themselves, regardless of the stress and strain it places on their employees?
Nothing that has been discussed in the above comments is incorrect or not happening at one or more of the big MMs. It’s an at will employment industry – in short you can take it or leave it.