An HFT firm paying £480k in London is filling its new office with these graduates
Optiver, a Dutch high-frequency trader and electronic market maker, went on a hiring binge in 2023. Its annual report released back in April revealed its global headcount rose 14% to 1,952 employees. In its UK division, headcount has grown much faster.
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2023 accounts for 'Optiver UK Limited' have been released via Companies House, which show average headcount rose 58% from 74 to 117. At the start of 2024, the entity had 126 employees. This is just above the target of 120 that CEO John Rothstein set in June 2022.
This rapid expansion is a result of its new(ish) office. It moved from Heron Tower in Bishopsgate to 20 Old Bailey near St. Paul's in mid-2022. Pictures released of the office that year are certainly impressive, with expansive collaborative areas, a barista station and six-monitor desk spaces. The office can house up to 200 employees.
Optiver's UK employees received some impressive pay packages. Total compensation for its 117 average employees, which we've calculated as an addition of "wages," "share based payments" and the firm's "profit sharing" program, was £476.4k ($631.8k) per person last year. However, this was a significant decline from 2022. Profit sharing makes up the bulk of compensation and revenues fell from 2022 to 2023; the 74 average employees in 2022 earned £699.3k ($927.4k) per head.
According to the designer of Optiver's London office, one of its aims was to "attract young talent," and much of its 2023 hiring seems to have been skewing towards youth. It showed particular affinity for Imperial College graduates; at least four Imperial College alums joined the firm directly after graduating in 2023, including PhD physicist Alistair Smith, who joined as a quantitative researcher that August. For its total UK headcount, Imperial is still the most popular school, followed closely by Cambridge.
Senior hires were comparatively sparse, but included head of FX institutional sales Navid Faramarzian. He joined that March after 12 and a half years in banking, predominantly at Credit Suisse.
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