By Jason Corcoran in Moscow
Russian brokerage firm Otkritie has hired the former head of Troika Dialog’s UK operation and a senior trader in a expansion of its business.
Howard Snell, the former UK chief executive of Troika Dialog, has joined Otkritie as a London-based director. He will be responsible for the firm’s UK business strategy. In addition, he will focus on corporate and investor relations.
Otkritie has also hired Nicholas Richmond as director and head of equity trading, based in Moscow.
Snell was responsible for launching Troika’s UK and European business in 2003. At Troika, Snell headed the UK subsidiary which conducted European equity and fixed income brokerage, private banking, asset management and corporate finance businesses.
Prior to Troika, Snell had worked at UBS, where he was responsible for debt capital market origination for Russia and the CIS.
Snell resigned from Troika in May but but had remained on the board of directors of the UK business for a couple of months as he “considered his options.”
Richmond has been working in equity markets for 20 years, of which the most recent eight have been in senior roles focusing primarily on Russian trading. He was previously vice president at JP Morgan and head of Russian trading, where he ran the flow book and Russian proprietary trading book as well as pricing and hedging risk.
Roman Lokhov, the chief executive at Otkritie Securities, said in a statement: “Building on the success of our Direct Market Access product, Howard and Nicholas will help propel us to the next level by further growing our market share and firmly establishing Otkritie at the forefront of Russian brokerage market,” he added.
So far this year, Otkritie said it had gained 100 new Russian and international institutional clients and has recruited 12 analysts from leading brokerages across Russia.
Its trading volumes doubled month on month for the first six months of 2009, with its total exchange traded volume reaching $6.5bn.
