David Ogg Launches Electronic Forex Trading Service

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1 David Ogg Launches Electronic Forex Trading Service By Jessica Mead May 23, 2011 Electronic trading specialist David Ogg Monday launched Ogg Trading, which aims to provide traders with the technology to help them place optimal trades in the global currency markets. New York-based Ogg Trading said it would assist buy-side and sell-side institutional traders in the foreign-exchange markets and expects to "deliver its first offering in the second half of 2011." Ogg Trading has entered into a partnership with Pragma Securities, which provides quantitative and algorithmic trading tools, for the venture. David Ogg previously founded electronic currency trading systems LavaFX and Hotspot FX. Currenciesdealing system FXAll bought LavaFX from Citigroup Inc. (C) in January 2010 while Knight Capital Group Inc. (KCG) acquired HotspotFX in Michael Kahn joins Ogg Trading as chief operating officer and head of sales, having previously worked at State Street Global Markets, Ogg said.

2 Ogg Trading Launches with Mandate to Revolutionise the FX Market By Julie Ros May 23, 2011 The long awaited next venture from serial entrepreneur David Ogg is unveiled in an exclusive interview in the June issue of Profit & Loss. Ogg, founder and former CEO of both Hotspot FX and LavaFX, will today (Monday 23 May) announce the launch of Ogg Trading (OT), a provider of advanced execution solutions for buy and sell side institutional traders. Although few details are being revealed at this stage, the new venture is promising to bring a host of technological innovations to the FX market starting in Q3. Ogg says OT s services will be in the arena of best execution and liquidity management. Although guarded with details, he says that OT will help institutional clients achieve superior execution standards in ways that will give them a competitive advantage when executing either large or small trades, and will provide a way of finding and seeking out liquidity in the marketplace at large, matching buyers and sellers in a way that is more efficient with a higher likelihood of success than is available today. Our goal at Ogg Trading is to help our clients significantly improve their profitability by providing them with a major competitive edge, explains Ogg. Best execution standards in FX are not where they need to be and have consistently lagged behind other markets. When traders calculate the cumulative effect of not achieving best execution, they realise this has a major impact on their bottom line. It is our mission at Ogg Trading to bring new profit-enhancing tools and technologies to market that will allow participants to gain execution capabilities that are not available to them in today s marketplace, and we re very excited about that. New York-based OT has also established a strategic partnership with Pragma Securities, which provides advanced quantitative and algorithmic trading tools. OT is leveraging Pragma s technology and expertise to quickly deliver trading capabilities to the marketplace, says Ogg. Pragma was an easy choice for us. They have an excellent reputation in equities, very powerful software and innovative ideas on algorithmic execution, he says. Together we will be able to provide execution capabilities way beyond anything available in the marketplace today. This is a great partnership for Pragma, adds David Mechner, CEO of Pragma Securities. Ogg Trading will leverage our strong technology platform and experience with equities liquidity aggregation and algorithmic trading to bring unparalleled execution capabilities to its clients in the FX market. Given the Ogg team s history of technological innovation, broad reach, and deep domain expertise in FX, we are confident that together we will have a significant, positive impact in advancing the state of the art in FX execution.

3 DJ David Ogg Launches Electronic Forex Trading Service By Jessica Mead May 23, 2011 Electronic trading specialist David Ogg Monday launched Ogg Trading, which aims to provide traders with the technology to help them place optimal trades in the global currency markets. New York-based Ogg Trading said it would assist buy-side and sell-side institutional traders in the foreign-exchange markets and expects to "deliver its first offering in the second half of 2011." Ogg Trading has entered into a partnership with Pragma Securities, which provides quantitative and algorithmic trading tools, for the venture. David Ogg previously founded electronic currency trading systems LavaFX and Hotspot FX. Currenciesdealing system FXAll bought LavaFX from Citigroup Inc. (C) in January 2010 while Knight Capital Group Inc. (KCG) acquired HotspotFX in Michael Kahn joins Ogg Trading as chief operating officer and head of sales, having previously worked at State Street Global Markets, Ogg said.

4 Ogg s new venture to tap 'huge' demand for best execution in FX By Chiara Albanese May 24, 2011 David Ogg Industry veteran targets lack of technology to allow the buy side to be sure of achieving best execution in foreign exchange Ogg Trading, a provider of advanced execution tools for the foreign exchange industry that launched yesterday, will offer investors a much-needed way to achieve best execution and improve their bottom line, according to its chief executive David Ogg. "Execution for FX trades is not yet where it should or could be. In partnership with Pragma Securities, we will develop individual algorithms that will give our clients a competitive edge. Best execution is not a new concept, but our goal is to increase profitability by delivering a very advanced methodology. There is a huge market for this product," Ogg told FX Week. Ogg brings a wealth of experience to the role, having been founder and chief executive of electronic FX platforms Hotspot FX and LavaFX, and managed FX trading rooms at Credit Suisse, HSBC, Lehman Brothers and Dresdner Kleinwort. Ogg Trading will be based in New York and aims to deliver its first tools to clients in the second half of By partnering with New York-based Pragma Securities, which specialises in liquidity aggregation and algorithmic trading in the equity market, Ogg hopes to leverage that experience and apply it to the FX market. "Buy-side clients are interested in gaining as much access to the market as possible, and seeing the tightest spreads across many currency pairs. Additionally, buy-side firms are concerned about protecting their identity," said Ogg. Reflecting on his time at Hotspot, Ogg said the venture was successful because it answered a specific need of the buy side something he hopes to achieve with Ogg Trading. "Hotspot was successful because there was a large, unaddressed market. Prior to Hotspot, the buy side could only trade one-toone with banks. Hotspot allowed them to have access to the broader market and to trade not just with banks, but also with other buy-side firms," he said. On announcing its launch yesterday, Ogg Trading said Michael Kahn would be its chief operating officer and head of sales. Kahn joins from State Street Global Markets, where he managed the growth of the FX

5 trading business in the US and Europe. He also has experience at Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse, where he worked alongside Ogg. Further partnerships and appointments will be announced in the coming months as the firm continues its launch, Ogg said.

6 1 of 2 7/6/ :49 PM Best Ex in FX By Justin Grant (mailto:jgrant@techweb.com) July 05, 2011 URL: ( David Ogg, who pioneered the use of algorithms in the international currency trading markets, argues that best execution in foreign exchange has been sorely lacking for the institutional buy side. To fill that void, the founder of electronic FX trading platforms Hotspot FX and LavaFX is rolling out Ogg Trading, a system that uses algorithms to sweep the markets for the best execution prices. Ogg, whose latest venture is slated to debut during the second half of 2011, says the system also features software that makes decisions on which strategies a trader should use. "We're putting a lot of work into some very clever algorithms that analyze the markets and ensure that the ideal trade is made at the ideal time," he explains. "These tools are going to help traders increase their profitability and ensure that each time they go out to trade, they're doing so in a manner that statistically gets them the best opportunities to trade at the best price." In order to get his new company off the ground - and gain access to sophisticated algorithms - the firm entered into a strategic partnership with trading system provider Pragma Securities, according to Ogg. The arrangement will allow the start-up operation to feed off of Pragma's experience in building algorithms and aggregating liquidity, and convert it into improved execution capabilities for FX traders, Ogg says. On the other hand, the partnership enables Pragma - which has enjoyed success in the equities market - to gain a foothold in the global currencies space. "Partnering with them was a no-brainer. They've got a great reputation in equities as far as providing advanced execution capabilities to their clients," Ogg explains. "So we'll take some of their products and put some of our own sauce on top of it, which will help us get to market quicker." Can Lightning Strike Twice? Meanwhile, Ogg says, he sees parallels between his new company and his other brainchild, Hotspot FX, which launched in October Hotspot, which was sold to Knight Capital in 2006 for $77.5 million, was the first to offer an FX electronic communication network to the institutional buy side. It also enabled traders to make deals anonymously. "When I started Hotspot, the buy side had no direct market access," Ogg recalls. "Now access is plentiful and there's all sorts of places people can trade, in all sorts of manners. But do you actually make sure you're doing the right thing every time?" At the time of its sale to Knight Capital, Hotspot had grown into one of the world's largest multibank trading systems for FX. More than a decade later, Ogg wagers he'll be able to flip yet another inefficiency in the FX market into an industry force. "Best execution standards in FX are not where they need to be and have consistently lagged other markets," Ogg insists. "When traders calculate the cumulative effect of not achieving best execution, they realize this