Balarkas New CEO of Instinet Europe

Instinet Europe has rounded out its senior management team with the appointment of Richard Balarkas to President and CEO of the Instinet subsidiary based in London.

Balarkas joins following the appointment of Clive Triance as Chief Operating Officer last October and Stephen Corker who came on board in January as Chief Financial Officer.

Balarkas was previously global head of sales in Credit Suisse's Advanced Execution Services group. He says he came over to Instinet following the launch of Chi-X Europe, which is going to be separated out from the agency brokerage as a separate entity and will take with it some of the management team.

"There is substantial growth to be had in Europe," says Balarkas. "Instinet Europe is uniquely positioned as a full-service agency broker, offering a full suite of execution services from algorithms to programs, DMA and CSAs and we have over 40 sales traders in Europe."

He adds that his focus will be on continuing to build out that execution suite and the agency brokerage message. "The message I want to get out is that Instinet still has that edge and flair in terms of innovation and a substantial brokerage operations, in fact its in the top ten for market share in the U.K," says Balarkas.

In addition, new liquidity pools and advanced routing tools will also be key for Instinet Europe. "There is an enormous degree of interest especially in dark liquidity pools that are being launched and how they can be accessed and what is smart routing how smart is it," he says. "We have linked to every venue that is capable of being linked up to and we've adopted smart routing across the spectrum."

Triance joins Instinet Europe from Citigroup where he was Managing Director of Securities and Fund Services for EMEA. Corker was previously European CFO at Tullett Prebon.