The firm, called Alacrity Capital, will trade under the name of Merchant Capital Limited, the AIM-listed financial services group. The fund will use algorithmic models to trade spot FX initially, though it hopes to add options to its investment program at a later date, as more option trading is executed electronically when regulations on mandated electronic trading is implemented later this year, said Coquillaud in an interview.
Coquillaud and Hitchins have worked together for more than five years at several different firms. Coquillaud was most recently a senior FX exotics derivatives and algo trader at Toronto Dominion, where he worked alongside Hitchins, who was global head of FX options. Hitchins left to join Unicredit in December 2010 as global head of G10 vanilla options. They also worked together at Calyon and Bank of America.