Tradeweb | accomplishing global success through London

Founded in 1996 in the US, Tradeweb is an electronic trading platform for rates, credit, equities and money markets that supports trading of more than 40 products across 65 countries. More than 2,500 clients connect to Tradeweb to form a global network of the world’s largest banks, asset managers, hedge funds, insurance companies, wealth managers and retail clients.

Today Tradeweb has evolved into a Nasdaq-listed company with the London Stock Exchange as its largest shareholder.

We spoke to Enrico Bruni, Managing Director and Head of Europe and Asia Business, about the role London plays in their international growth strategy.

Can you tell us about your journey into the UK? What attracted Tradeweb to the UK?

Tradeweb has been operating in the UK for 23 years. In 2000, we set up our European headquarters in London. At that time the Euro had just been created and we saw huge opportunities in digitising the European government bond market.

As we were looking to expand our business into Europe, London emerged as a great choice for our regional base. London was the centre for trading with all the big players located here, and building business relationships has always been critical to us both from a growth and an innovation perspective.

London provides a great enabling business environment for us and has a lot to offer in infrastructure and technology, which are important to an electronic marketplace like ours. We also benefit from flexibility of the UK labour market and legal system. 

After 20+ years in the UK, how has your operation here evolved? What roles does the UK office play in your global operations?

London remains the regional centre for us and our biggest office east of our headquarters in New York. We run our emerging market business from London, which we look to expand into the MENA region. Furthermore, a lot of our products originated here, such as our ETF marketplace.

Without a doubt, London is one of the world’s leading locations in terms of talent and connectivity. Universities here train excellent economics and tech graduates – another reason for our prominent presence in the UK. Our technologists here are responsible for many new innovative solutions and features.

UK policymakers and regulators are also very much attuned to financial markets and we continue to experience constructive interactions with both here.

How can the UK remain competitive going forward?

Tech infrastructure is the anchor for financial services firms nowadays and the one London offers is exceptional. To stay ahead, however, the UK needs to continue investing in new tech infrastructure initiatives, as well as sourcing the right talent, something that has been more challenging in the last two years.

We are always open to working with policymakers and regulators to build a more efficient financial market that supports innovation in the UK. The UK already has some good start, such as the digital sandbox and a crypto framework. Clear regulatory guidance that bolsters financial innovations is critical to the UK’s competitiveness.