Chicago’s Peak6 Investments sold its New York Stock Exchange floor brokerage MND Partners to TJM Investments, a Chicago agency brokerage.
Eighteen employees joined TJM, including founders Neil Catania and Michael Smyth. Co-founder Dan James left the firm in January. Thomas Kane, who joined MND as a managing partner in 2009 when it was acquired by Peak6, also left in January.
Peak6, an options market making firm, acquired MND to facilitate the dealer’s hedging activities. The arrangement was also intended to benefit MND which would be able to match Peak6’s stock orders with those of its institutional customers.
According to Catania, that arrangement didn’t work out as well as expected. Peak6 sold MND, he said, because it decided it did not want to be in the agency business, preferring to focus on proprietary trading.
Catania says that MND was a profitable business, but it has had its defections. Last summer, three MND sales traders left the firm to join competing NYSE floor broker Greywolf Execution Partners. At the time, a Greywolf spokesperson told Traders Magazine that the traders were drawn by Greywolf’s research offering, something that MND lacked.
TJM Investments is a Chicago agency brokerage founded by Thomas J. Murphy and two partners in 1996 that specializes in futures and options trades for hedge funds. Executives there would not comment about the deal, except to note that it made sense for a boutique agency brokerage to offer trades in both futures and equities.
Peak6 could not be reached for comment.
