Waters Rankings 2020: Best Agency Broker—Liquidnet

Liquidnet wins the best agency broker category at this year’s Waters Rankings, taking the award from last year’s winner, ITG. The firm has taken steps over the last three years to grow its capabilities in artificial intelligence-based analytics, through a slew of acquisitions. In May 2017, Liquidnet acquired OTAS Technologies, a provider of intelligent analytics, and in 2019 added RSRCHXchange and Prattle to its collection of businesses. The recent investments in its data and analytics portfolio are geared at offering fund managers better tools to access, evaluate and act on market insights, through its Liquidnet trading platforms.

In the last 10 months, the firm has also made several prominent leadership changes to drive its technology, analytics and equities strategies. In November 2019, Patrick Strobel was appointed CTO; in January this year, Vicky Sanders took on the role of head of investment analytics, overseeing the three platform acquisitions; and in February year, Brian Conroy was elevated to CEO, while Sujay Telang became head of equities technology in June. “We are trying to emphasize that Liquidnet is on a new journey. There is new management with our new CEO and in the equities space, and we are expanding the service that we offer, particularly through the expansion of our analytics platforms, which have been collated and made into a highly efficient equities support platform over the years,” said Simon Maughan, head of trading alpha at Liquidnet, during an interview for WatersTechnology’s WaveLength Podcast on July 31.

Liquidnet has spent that last two decades growing its network to over 1,000 institutional investors that collectively manage $33 trillion in equity and fixed-income assets. It connects institutional brokers, investment banks, exchanges, alternative trading venues, and data suppliers across 46 markets and six continents.

Previous winners of this category include ITG (2019), Weeden and Co. (2018), Bloomberg Tradebook (2017), and UBS Neo.