Mariana Capital Markets Asia (Mariana), a boutique brokerage firm founded by the former head of equity liquid markets distribution for Asia Pacific at Barclays, Adrian Valenzuela (pictured), and the former global head of equities at Nomura, Rachid Bouzouba, has launched in Hong Kong.
The new firm, which is partnered with London-based Mariana Capital Markets, opened its Hong Kong office on Monday with ten staff. Although the firm will focus on derivatives trading and quantitative products, it will also offer advisory services related to asset management and structured products in the near future.
Managing partner at Mariana Capital Markets in London, Daniel Hawkins, told SRP that the new firm will operate independently but will also work closely with the London team to leverage its brokerage and research capabilities.
The opening of Mariana in Hong Kong follows the launch of Mariana Capital Market's structured products business in the UK, which has been built with the help of a number of structured products professionals including former Merchant Capital managers, John Gracey and Tony King.
London-based Mariana Capital Markets was founded in 2009 by former bankers from Lehman Brothers - chief executive Elton James was formerly a senior equity derivative trader at the US investment bank, and managing partner Daniel Hawkins was formerly head of equity derivatives research at Lehman Brothers.
Mariana Capital Markets includes in its ranks a number of other former Lehman bankers including Sebastien Krol, who was an equity derivatives strategist; Kaveh Rahbary, who worked at the bank's convertible bonds desk; and Rajvinder Minhas, who worked on Lehman's hedge fund sales desk.
Prior to joining Nomura in 2008, Rachid Bouzouba had been a derivatives trader at Lehman Brothers since 2003 and was appointed head of equities for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2007.
Adrian Valenzuela joined Barclays in 2011 from JPMorgan, where he was global co-head of equities distribution. Prior to that, he was head of alpha strategies for EMEA at Merrill Lynch, and before that he was head of European flow equity derivative sales at Lehman Brothers.
The launch comes at a time when a number of investment banks in the Asia-Pacific region have moved to downsize their equity derivatives trading teams, following a fall in trading volumes.