DrKW hits its cross-asset stride

Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW) is hitting its stride in its bid to provide clients with one-stop shopping for cross-asset class trading—a keystone of its Digital Markets (DM) group, which is paving the way forward for the firm.

“In a nutshell, it is an electronic agency brokerage within the investment bank,” Park says. “It’s the group within Capital Markets responsible for developing, deploying and operating all of our electronic trading and analytical applications across all asset classes and across all geographies….”

“…Over time, we will deliver products uniquely through this channel to a whole host of our customers.”

…according to Andy Rowland, the head of trading for DM, DrKW, the new plumbing has enabled traders to work simultaneously in: cash equities in European centers and the U.S; government bonds and gilts; cash foreign exchange (FX); and listed derivatives. “We’re pushing out into credit in the near future,” Rowland says.One of the key goals for the cross-asset push is to grow the business without having to take on more staff, Rowland says. In addition, current staff has been adjusting to the new situation.

“It’s just that a lot more of their jobs are becoming automated and they’re concentrating on bigger more value-add business and leaving the machines to deal with the smaller more liquid markets,” Rowland says. “It allows us to have single traders that can trade multiple asset classes at the same time using single technology. It is very much breaking the boundaries really because the business has classically been siloed.”

“We’re trying to be agnostic as to the platforms that we use in various asset classes,” Park says. Much of the IT work is focused on cleaning up the plumbing of electronic trading such as the multiple APIs, buses and front-office applications. Over the last two years, DM technologists have been focusing on what systems to keep, what to turn off and what to buy.