Goldman Sachs voted best market-maker for Asia ETFs

Market-making for exchange-traded funds and other Delta One activities have been in the news of late, thanks to the $2.3 billion loss believed to have been perpetrated by a trader at UBS in London.

Buy-side traders of Asian equities say their preferred market-maker for ETFs is Goldman Sachs, although hedge funds, taken as a separate group, voted UBS top.

However, trumping all of these was Credit Suisse, which was voted best at program trading by both long-only and hedge funds, according to a survey of buy-side equity traders conducted by AsianInvestor.

The survey was carried out over the course of September from an eligible universe of 400 traders across 173 buy-sides.

We solicited nominations of top clients from sell-side institutions, and buy-sides nominated by multiple brokers were included in the eligibility pool. We ultimately received responses from 96 individuals from across 56 firms, of which about one-third were hedge funds and two-thirds were long-only desks.

Responses were weighted according to number of participants per buy-side firm, size of Asian equity assets, and (when asked to select up to three answers) in order of preference.

The full results of the survey will be published in the forthcoming October edition of AsianInvestor magazine.

Within program trading, CS enjoyed the top score, although Citi and Morgan Stanley were close behind.

Within this area, we asked the market about transition management/index rebalancing, ETF market-making, quant research and facilitation for portfolio trades.

Goldman dominated the ETF question, both among long-only and hedge clients. Throughout our survey, Goldman’s strength has been among hedge funds, but in this case it enjoyed broader support.

Hedge funds also voted Goldman best for transition management, but long-only sides selected Citi.

Citi and Morgan Stanley also topped questions around quant research and risk pricing for portfolio trades, although Macquarie’s research was a contender, particularly among hedge funds.