Popular London electronic trading head has a big new job & money to hire

Before electronic trading firms were the hottest places to work, investment banks gave them a pretty good run for their money. And before Credit Suisse met its sorry end, it had a pretty good electronic trading business. That trading business was known as AES (algorithmic execution services) and within it one man was towered above the rest. He was widely respected, widely liked and widely held to be responsible for its success: Naz Al-Khudairi. Now Naz is back, and he is seemingly in a position to hire.

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He didn't respond to a request to comment for this article, but writing on LinkedIn, Al-Khudairi said he's joined Ingenuity Trading, as chief operating officer and head of strategy. It's a trading firm that self-describes as an "AI-native, ultra-low-latency system," to improve institutional trade execution. Based in New York, it currently focuses only US equities and options. This could be about to change.

Al-Khudairi is based in London and the expectation is that his arrival will herald the opening of a new London office. It's also thought that Ingenuity will push out of US equities and into European equities, and maybe into other asset classes like FX.

The firm is in a good position to do so. In June, it raised $4.8m in seed funding to 'expand across new products and geographies.' 

In doing so, it's likely to hire. For the moment, ingenuity has around 10 full time employees, plus co-founders Pallav Chhaochhria (ex-Barclays, ex-Citi) and Karthik Teki (ex-Barclays). Chhaochhria was a former director at Barclays; Teki was a former VP. After leaving Credit Suisse in 2017, Al-Khudairi joined Barclays as global electronic trading. He left again in 2021. The two men have hired their old boss. 

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