OES Hires Options Veteran

Order Execution Services Holdings (OES) has hired Corey Zimmerman as managing director, options and derivatives, to lead the firm into the options agency-execution business. Zimmerman joins OES from Botta Capital Management, where he was a principal of the Chicago-based options trading firm. OES Holdings is the parent company of Order Execution Services and ABS Brokerage Services, both of which are introducing and agency broker-dealers.

Previously, Zimmerman had done some consulting work with OES and was impressed, he relates. "The reason I took the job was for the challenge of adopting OES' existing model for stock execution and applying it to the options execution business," he says. "I'd like to replicate the success [OES] has had there."

Having begun his new role in March, Zimmerman is first charged with helping to align the firm with a number of broker-dealers and exchanges to establish options connectivity, he says. The goal, Zimmerman notes, is to provide seamless, electronic activity to various options venues.

OES entered the options fray because of its explosive growth over the past five to 10 years, according to Zimmerman, who has been in the options business for 13 years and notes that during that time there was a lack of education in the investment community about options, which resulted in low volumes. "As education has increased and people have learned the value of employing options into a trading strategy, it's taken off," he says. Along with education has come competition, driving down costs and making options trading more accessible.

OES plans to have the business running within a few months. The firm will start slowly and ramp up from there, Zimmerman says.