Goldman Sachs has hired Christina Makiguchi to run its electronic trading business in Japan and China. She is joining from Credit Suisse in Tokyo, where she has headed its Japanese e-trading platform since 2007.
The China role is an addition to the responsibilities Makiguchi had at Credit Suisse and plays to the fact that she grew up in Taiwan and is a fluent Mandarin speaker. Her official employment at Credit Suisse ends tomorrow, August 24, and she will start as a vice-president at Goldman in Tokyo on September 1 after being on gardening leave since May. Credit Suisse has not yet announced a replacement.
Goldman has not previously had an e-trading country head in Japan and China. Shuya Kekke, who is also based in Tokyo, heads the overall Asia business and Makiguchi will report to him. She will also have a reporting line into Hong Kong, to Shane Bolton, who is the Asia head of execution sales.
Makiguchi was a director at Credit Suisse in Japan and head of its advanced execution services (AES) platform. The bank also maintains AES desks in Hong Kong, London and New York. Makiguchi has previously headed Japan e-trading at Lehman Brothers and UBS.
Goldman’s e-trading business, which it calls GSET, provides clients with algorithmic strategies across equities, futures, synthetics and options, as well as the ability to trade through its Sigma smart-order router and its Sigma X dark pools in Hong Kong, Japan and the US, allowing clients to benefit from the liquidity that flows through Goldman’s infrastructure, which comprises trading activity from hedge funds, institutions and broker-dealers, as well as the flow from Goldman’s trading desks.
Clients can access the dark liquidity pool through Goldman’s own execution management system, through third-party trading systems or any system that supports the Fix protocol.
“Sigma X requires no technology build on the part of the customer, regardless of which system they use,” said Kekke at the time of the launch of the Hong Kong dark pool in 2009. “By opting into Sigma X, a customer’s order can potentially interact with the broad and deep sources of liquidity within Goldman Sachs, including the single stock and portfolio trading franchise flow, in addition to the diverse, self-directed GSET client flows,” he added.
