Wayne Mepham, chief financial and operating officer (CFOO) at Jupiter Asset Management announced last month that Alison Hollingshead, currently the COO for Investment Management will be promoted to chief technology officer for Jupiter AM, and Mike Poole to head of investment platform, from his current role as head of trading.
“In partnership with the head of trading, [Ali] has led a programme of automation and data integration across the trading desk, driving data-led decision making and increasing scalability in the systematic franchise,” Mepham wrote to staff in an internal memo, dated 11 March, seen by The DESK.
Hollingshead’s career began at GLG Partners, where she was a trading system technologist, implementing the firm’s proprietary order and execution management system globally. She then moved into an equity trading role before later transitioning into business strategy. Following Man Group’s acquisition of GLG in 2010, she took on broader transformation and technology responsibilities across the combined group, rising to chief of staff for Trading Platform and Core Technology, a 220-person department responsible for the technology underpinning the entire trading lifecycle.
Speaking to The DESK, Hollingshead said, “I was hired for my skill set and knowledge of hedge fund type-data and technology, but also my abilities in speed of execution, agility, and change management. In the last four years we have come a long way. A lot of what we’ve done on the trading desk has been to address how we support hedge fund investment styles. Some of the things we’ve done around cash management, treasury, the work Mike’s done with the systematic team particularly, has been to think much more in the way hedge funds are run.”
A key part of that has been to enact this change by throwing intelligence rather than money at the problem.
“The last few years have been a period of cost consolidation for Jupiter,” she says. “We’re definitely in a different phase now, but we really worked to transform the front office in spite of the cost constraints, using what we already have, upskilling people already within the business, moving some people from other parts of the business into the front office to drive change that without having to make huge investment. Now I’m thinking about how we invest for growth.”
The DESK understands that Poole will join Jupiter’s senior management team, expanding his responsibility for a range of functions within the investment management division and becoming a member of the firm’s operating committee.
During his two decades in the business, Poole rose through the ranks to become head of trading in October 2022. He has championed the trading team within the business and externally to clients and at industry events, and worked closely with Hollingshead to transform trading and investment into a leaner machine.
“Change for change’s sake doesn’t equal progress,” he says. “When you have a well-established trading and investment teams sometimes the status quo is okay. As long as you’re thinking about efficiencies, as long as you’re developing and evolving, you do not need huge changes. We’ve got a very experienced training team who are excited to learn new skills. Turnover [on the book] is up 100% or more year-on-year. That shows the scalability of the platform built on foundations that Ali put in place.”
The practical advantages for the fixed trading team has been to supplement their experience and skills with a more data-led approach.
“Over the last 12 months our data science and trading teams have built out a fixed income dashboard and platform,” says Poole. “It’s in Power BI but it utilises a number of API’s and Aladdin Data Cloud. Leveraging data sources such as existing TCA providers, new entrants such as Propellant then produces a standardised dashboard that allows traders to look at historical trade data, RFQ data, trend analysis. Post-trade they can assess where we traded, what was expected, and then capture that activity versus market. In-house expertise can put together something like that which fits our trading style, which tweaking an off-the-shelf product cannot.”
Building this approach out of the entire business has clear merits he notes, as it seeks to broaden its capabilities on behalf of end investors.
“Ali and I are going to take things like that across Jupiter as a whole,” he says. “You can hear the excitement on our side, we’re really looking forward to it.”
Jupiter AM will have one gap, as it now need to fill Poole’s former role as head of trading.
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