Jersey City, New Jersey, January 14, 2019 - Spotex, a developer of modular technology systems for the foreign exchange markets and ECN operator, today announced it has hired John Miesner as Executive Managing Director, Global Head of Sales and Distribution. Miesner was previously Managing Director and Global Head of Sales at GTX.
The hire comes as Spotex moves to expand its technology and liquidity products and services to the institutional sector of the foreign exchange market. The firm launched in 2014 with an ECN-based technology offering that was specifically built to address shortcomings in existing systems. It was founded by Ritesh Agrawal, who previously held senior IT positions at Hotspot FX (now Cboe FX), GFI and PwC, and Chris Mitchell, who held similar positions in financial technology.
"We are fortunate to have John join us at this transformative point in our evolution, "said Agrawal, Chief Executive Officer, Spotex. "John's vast knowledge of the institutional foreign exchange market and its key participants will be a tremendous asset as he leads the company forward."
To date Spotex has provided its ECN and technology on a wholesale basis primarily to brokers and money managers. The technology is built on a flexible, extremely stable, ultra-low latency architecture.
It has begun rolling out a hub product, enabling banks, non-bank liquidity providers and other institutions to set up bespoke trading networks and liquidity pools to optimize market access, lower costs, and better meet best execution mandates.
"I see tremendous opportunity in the company's approach to the institutional FX market and am excited to lead the Spotex team," said Miesner. "The multilateral ECN model introduced nearly 20 years ago has transformed spot FX trading. Spotex is well positioned to support the next phase of evolution in which institutional market participants create their own, innovative trading paradigms."
"We have developed robust institutional and wholesale technology that has been refined and tested over the last five years," said Mitchell, Spotex's Chief Operating Officer. "With John on board, we are eager to bring it to market."
Prior to Spotex and GTX, Miesner was head of global sales at Hotspot FX. He previously held senior FX sales and trading positions at leading global banks.
Jersey City, New Jersey, June 10, 2019 - Spotex, a developer of FX technology systems and ECN operator, today announced it has hired Kevin Gillespie as Director of Institutional Sales. He will be based in London and report to John Miesner, Executive Managing Director and Global Head of Sales and Distribution.
Prior to joining Spotex, Gillespie held sales and business development roles at Cobalt, Hotspot FX, and IFX Markets. He started his career as an FX proprietary trader at Toronto Dominion Bank.
At Spotex, Gillespie will cover institutional and broker clients as well as banks, primarily in Europe. He will be responsible for sales of the firm's FX liquidity and technology solutions.
"Kevin's breadth of experience in foreign exchange liquidity and technology are a great fit with Spotex as we roll out new services and technology solutions for brokers and institutions," said Miesner. "I am pleased to welcome Kevin to the Spotex team at this exciting time in our development."
Jersey City, New Jersey, July 8, 2019 ‐ Spotex today launched new functionality that enables brokers to configure discrete liquidity pools for clients. The new hub capability runs on Spotex's modular broker technology, which supports full, front-to-back office capabilities and low latency trade executions.
To date Spotex has provided its ECN and proprietary, modular FX technology on a wholesale basis primarily to brokers and money managers.
Brokers, especially those offering pure agency (or "A" book) execution models, are the main users of Spotex technology and ECN. The introduction of discrete liquidity hubs will enable brokers to provide new liquidity models to clients.
"We are excited to roll out this new offering, which we've developed in close collaboration with key broker clients," said John Miesner, Senior Managing Director, Spotex LLC. "The new hub offering enables brokers to configure liquidity pools that best fit their business models and the trading objectives of their clients."
In addition to running on Spotex technology, the new hubs take advantage of Spotex's extensive network of leading FX liquidity providers, prime brokers and prime-of-prime brokers.
To set up a new liquidity hub, a broker selects liquidity providers from those available through its prime brokers and/or prime-of-prime brokers. A broker can also integrate its own price feed.
Jersey City, New Jersey, September 9, 2019 - Leading FX prime brokers, J.P. Morgan and NatWest Markets are now providing access to Spotex's institutional ECN. The prime brokers join as Spotex is expanding its presence in the institutional FX market segment with the firm's introduction of new disclosed direct market access (DMA). liquidity pools as well as other initiatives to broaden participation on its ECN.
"We are excited to have J.P. Morgan and NatWest Markets join our existing tier-one prime brokers enabling institutional client access to Spotex" said John Miesner, the firm's Senior Managing Director. "We are committed to working with leading FX institutions to deliver powerful innovation to the foreign exchange market."
Spotex provides high performance FX technology on a wholesale basis to brokers, institutions and fund managers. The firm's institutional ECN is built on a flexible, stable, ultra-low latency architecture. ECN innovations include a continuous 24/7 trading week with no end-of-day shutdowns as well as performance-based matching logic designed to improve fill ratios and response times.
Spotex's technology supports its institutional ECN as well as bespoke disclosed DMA liquidity pools, which institutions can deploy to trade directly with select liquidity providers on a disclosed basis.
Jersey City, New Jersey, October 21, 2019 - Spotex, a developer of foreign exchange (FX) technology systems and ECN operator, today released Periscope™, a new multilevel credit and margin management module. Periscope enables prime brokers and prime-of-prime brokers (PoPs) to extend credit and/or margin to multiple levels of downstream, sub brokers.
Periscope is a specially built risk engine within Spotex's full white-label broker technology system and institutional ECN. It aggregates and monitors both credit and margin exposures from a top-level broker, typically a prime of prime broker, down as many as four levels of sub brokers (five levels total).
"Periscope opens a range of new opportunities for prime brokers, prime of primes and retail brokers, who previously were unable to accommodate clients due to technology restrictions," said John Miesner, Senior Managing Director, Spotex. "Clients now have a broader range of firms they can execute through to trade on Spotex's institutional ECN."
Periscope enables sub brokers to provide their clients with direct access to Spotex's institutional low latency ECN where they can trade on a transparent central limit order book using active and passive order types powered by live market data.
Periscope demonstrates Spotex's commitment to provide advanced capabilities beyond those available in other ECN and FX technology systems. Other Spotex innovations include the ECN's continuous 24/7 weekly cycle, without end-of-day shutdowns, and proprietary, performance-based matching logic.
Learn MoreJersey City, NJ, January 28, 2019 -- Spotex, a developer of modular technology for the foreign exchange markets and ECN operator, today announced it has hired Tom Reichel and Paul Beatty Jr.The executives will report to John Miesner, the firm's recently hired Executive Managing Director and Global Head of Sales and Distribution.
Prior to joining Spotex, Reichel was Managing Director, FX Sales, at GTX. He previously held senior sales and trading roles at Hotspot FX (now Cboe FX), Kingstree Trading and Chicago Research and Trading (CRT).
Beatty joins Spotex from TP ICAP. Prior to joining the broker, he was Global Managing Director, Tradebook FX at Bloomberg.
"We are fortunate to have Tom and Paul join the firm as we launch our institutional offering," said Miesner. "Both bring tremendous expertise in foreign exchange trading, particularly concerning the benefits of ECNs for fund managers and other institutional market participants."
Reichel is a managing director and Beatty a director. They will be based in Chicago and Jersey City, New Jersey respectively.
Jersey City, New Jersey, October 30, 2019 - Spotex, a developer of foreign exchange technology systems and institutional ECN operator, today announced the promotion of John Miesner to Chief Executive Officer. The promotion comes less than a year after he joined the firm to lead its institutional expansion.
"I am grateful to the Spotex board and executive team for the confidence they have shown naming me CEO," said Miesner. "We've done a lot of exciting things together already and I look forward to working with the team and our clients to bring more innovation to the market in the months and years to come."
In recent months, Spotex has expanded its global sales network, added liquidity providers, prime brokers and prime of prime brokers. The firm also launched new technology products including disclosed liquidity pools for institutions, dedicated liquidity hubs for brokers, and Periscope™, a multilevel credit and margin manager that enables prime of primes and FX brokers to onboard multiple levels of smaller brokers.
"John is a known quantity in the FX industry, and he's brought a great new perspective to Spotex," said Rob Fleschler, CEO, Seabury Global Markets, a Spotex board member. "We couldn't be happier having him lead the company forward at this time of great opportunity for the business.
Miesner joined Spotex in January 2019 as Senior Managing Director and Global Head of Sales and Distribution.As part of the executive suite transition, Ritesh Agrawal, the firm's co-founder and long-time CEO, has taken the title Chief Technology Officer.