London Stock Exchange Appoints Baikal Commercial Director and COO

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has appointed a commercial director and chief operating officer for Baikal, its forthcoming dark liquidity trading venue. Natan Tiefenbrun, formerly of XConnect and Instinet joins as commercial director. A former president of Instinet's international division, Tiefenbrun directed development of global algorithmic trading capabilities and formulated the liquidity platform strategy that evolved into Chi-X.

He will be joined at Baikal by new COO Chris Rennoldson, an internal appointment from the LSE who has worked at the Exchange for seven years in corporate and business strategy. He was most recently a key part of the team managing the merger transaction with Borsa Italiana. Both appointments will report in to John Wilson, who was named Baikal CEO in October last year.

The Baikal dark pool launch is scheduled for late Q2. It will combine algorithmic and smart order routing technology with a multilateral non-display liquidity pool. The LSE has been presenting the business case for Baikal to industry participants following the set-back to its original plans to launch the business in conjunction with failed investment bank Lehman Brothers. The Exchange says it will hold an inaugural meeting of a newly-formed Baikal Buy Side Advisory Group, with the participation of fifteen leading buy side institutions, later this week.