Equiti Capital’s FX desk adds NatWest Markets as Prime Broker
Adding the new Prime Broker will facilitate Equiti Capital FX Desk’s ability to provide liquidity in FX derivatives including NDFs, forwards, swaps, vanilla, and exotic options.
Equiti Capital has onboarded NatWest Markets to the list of Prime Brokers on its FX Desk, which runs an agency model providing liquidity to the buy-side
The subsidiary of Equiti Group went to market in 2020 to appoint a second prime broker following the growth of its FX Desk in recent months, coupled with the need to use multiple Prime Brokers to diversify risk.
NatWest Markets emerged as a natural front runner. The Prime Broker is renowned for the flexibility of its approach, expansive credit access and dedicated and professional support teams.
Adding the new Prime Broker will facilitate Equiti Capital FX Desk’s ability to provide liquidity in FX derivatives including NDFs, forwards, swaps, vanilla, and exotic options.
Benedict Sears, Head of Equiti Capital’s FX Desk, said: “NatWest Markets offers versatile solutions that deliver a quicker time to market, expediting the process by which we establish lines of credit when facing Asset Managers, Family Offices, Hedge Funds, and Local Banks.”
Marcus Butt, Head of Global FX Prime Brokerage at NatWest Markets, said: “We are very pleased that Equiti Capital have recognized our PB solutions as market-leading and are looking forward to supporting Equiti Capital’s continued growth.
The clients Equiti Capital’s FX Desk trades with are engaging in the FX market for a multitude of reasons, from banks hedging corporate flow, equities and fixed income funds who hedge their FX exposure, to those taking proprietary FX risk.
The firm’s FX desk has growing in success not only due to its Prime Broker selection but also for its voice execution offering and macroeconomic insights.
With this, Equiti Capital aims to provide a superior service for Funds than that of what they expect from their bank counterparties due to reductions across bank Sales & Trading desks.
“As a desk, we have been heavily working on building out our electronic CLOB (Central Limit Order Book), we also have found great success in matching off the interest of clients in the Options market which allows the firms to get in and out of positions around mid, thus reducing the spreads they pay. We work hand in hand with local market makers trying to match off the interest they have with those of our buy-side clients, resulting in unique axes and pricing”, Mr. Sears continued.
“We find clients are often looking for help in executing large orders, with an emphasis on reducing market impact. Our Desk is able to help clients with this while maintaining a level of market access which would be unfeasible to maintain for a Buyside firm in the fragmented OTC FX market.”
Equiti Group, the parent company of Equiti Capital, boasts some of the most progressive FX and CFD brands and prime brokerage providers in the industry, offering access to individual, corporate, and institutional brokerage services across various affiliates and subsidiaries.
Spread across the world, its global footprint includes local offices in Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, Africa, and the Asia Pacific regions, providing trading support and services on the world’s leading trading platforms MT4 and MT5.
Africa is on Equiti Group’s mind for the long run. The company is heavily invested in igniting the “financial literacy revolution” there.
The company’s subsidiary EGM Securities has launched Kenya’s first NSE derivatives offering. This new NSE derivatives offering, with a 5-minute onboarding process instead of the two-day average in Kenya, has been made possible through collaboration between the NSE Derivatives Market, EGM Securities and their parent company Equiti Group’s global Product team.
