Big Xyt has appointed Phil Lemmon as head of EMEA transaction cost analysis (TCA) sales, continuing to invest in the service following a €10 million funding round led by Finch Capital.
Last week, Big Xyt stated that the investment would go towards its global expansion and support a 2025 hiring drive, with CEO Robin Mess stating that “funding will accelerate product innovation and team growth, enabling us to meet the rising demand for advanced analytics.”
“We’ve had a TCA offering in place for many years,” Robin Mess, CEO of Big Xyt told Global Trading, “and we’ve continuously invested in this product. When we strengthen our product side, we also have to strengthen our client-facing roles.”
Lemmon has more than 25 years of industry experience and joins Big Xyt from ISS LiquidMetrix, where he was head of EMEA sales. Prior to this, he held roles including commercial director at SteelEye, vice president for EMEA sales and client services at Abel Noser and head of sales engineering and client services at Pipeline Financial Group.
On his appointment, he commented: “With TCA often perceived as a mature, and sometimes commoditised service, Big Xyt’s approach presents an alternative and enables us to help our clients unlock further insights from their trading data, beyond mere ‘box ticking’.”
Overall demand for TCA products is increasing and becoming more complex, Mess said. “The industry has been exposed to ongoing regulatory change. MiFID II saw plenty of innovation launched by exchanges for the industry, and every time there is innovation existing solutions have to adapt.” In the last few years, the firm has seen increased use of the service for pre-trade analysis and decision-making.
“The TCA market is saturated, because everyone has to have a TCA solution place for regulatory and compliance reasons,” Mess observed. To differentiate from competitors such as Bloomberg, Eflow and Virtu, Big Xyt aims to look beyond the traditional scope of TCA products. “Every sell-side firm behaves in a slightly different way, and every algo has a slightly different nature. In order to reflect that, your pre- and post-trade analysis has to not only be of good quality, but has to respond to the individual needs of the participant. That is our USP, and that’s what helps us to displace existing providers,” he concluded.
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