Balance and compromise within the Best Execution process

Best execution as a concept continues to be the subject of much debate across the industry, with both liquidity providers and takers, and asset owners, having different opinions and definitions.

This is no surprise given the relatively amorphous nature of the subject, it really does just depend on what you are trying to achieve, how you are trying to achieve it and why.

Best execution means very different things to different types of market participants. For example, a passive index manager will typically have a best ex policy that differs considerably to that of a pure alpha driven macro hedge fund, or a corporate treasury. Clearly, it is not possible to define a ‘one size fits all’ definition for such a broad spectrum of market participants, and therefore any technology solution needs to be flexible and configurable.