Rising Star Award
Jennifer Hadiaris
Firm: ROYAL BANK OF CANADA CAPITAL MARKETS
When Jennifer Hadiaris starts working at RBC nine years ago, she was a business analyst on the cash equity trading desk, working for Bobby Grubert, head of U.S. Equities.
“I started at RBC in 2005, and working with a supportive mentor like Bobby was the best introduction to the business I could have had,” she said. “I was fortunate to work with the cash team as RBC was expanding. Seeing the business strategy adapt and market share grow was exciting, and I learned so much.”
But five years later, when RBC started a market structure team in 2010, it represented a very different type of opportunity, and Hadiaris raised her hand.
See A Slideshow of All The Winners
“It might not seem like a natural transition to market structure from the strategy side of the business, but RBC’s culture recognizes the value diverse backgrounds add. By sitting on the strategy side, you could see how the equity business was impacted,” she said. “I remember seeing our exchange fees go up year over year. You could really start to see how market structure issues, like maker-taker models, impact the trading business.”
As it turns out, her move has given Hadiaris a front-row seat in examining market structure during a period when not only has market structure been shifting but market structure debate has taken center stage, attracting interest beyond traditional Wall Street circles including the mainstream press. Initially, the market structure team was under electronic trading. Another mentor for Hadiaris was RBC’s then-head of electronic trading, Brad Katsuyama, founder of IEX, who has himself emerged as a prominent figure in market structure debate.
“While market structure is something we and our clients have been focused on for several years, it has been exciting being part of this at a time when people have been proactive about wanting to enact change in the market. I think the public dialog gets the market to a better place,” she said.
Joining the market structure group at its inception in 2010, Hadiaris became head of U.S. market structure in 2013. Having started in an internally focused role in equities research, she enjoys the client-facing aspect of her current role, which has allowed her to meet with clients representing a broad range of companies and responsibilities, including portfolio managers, corporate clients, issuers and analysts.
Moving forward, Hadiaris sees a broadening of the market structure debate into new assets and new markets.
“I know a lot of the conversation has been about U.S. market structure, so we remain focused on the U.S., but we have also worked in the past year to expand the team globally and coordinate our content in other regions,” she said. “A lot of our clients are global and multi-asset in nature, so the same issues they are experiencing in the equities market, they are experiencing in other countries and other asset classes.”
