Ryan Moroney, CEO and managing director of CQG, said it was a no-brainer to expand Alli Brennan’s role to head of Americas and EMEA, running sales for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) office as well as the Americas office. In the role since early November, Brennan said she’s excited by the opportunity to grow CQG’s footprint and launch products in a new region.  Moroney and Brennan spoke with John Lothian News about developments in CQG’s world of trade routing, market data, and technical analysis tools in an interview  at FIA Expo 2022.  

We asked them what opportunities CQG sees in Asia. Demand and opportunities are arising in India, and demand from London is strong, Moroney said. He credits a more holistic view of customer relationships under Brennan’s leadership. Brennan said that European and American teams are working together more cohesively, which has broadened everyone’s knowledge base. Both said that building trust and presenting CQG as a partner works well with the culture in London and elsewhere.

We asked what drives CQG’s success. Moroney said the firm’s success is tied to the industry’s success. CQG works hard to help build a healthy ecosystem of collaborative brokers, exchanges and technology platforms, he said. Brennan agreed, adding that deep partnerships enable the firm to listen to clients and build what they need, citing a project the firm did with Nasdaq as an example. She said CQG builds these “bespoke” solutions that enrich the industry as a whole.

We asked them to tell us about CQG One. Brennan said it’s a newer HTML5 version of the CQG desktop product that has advanced functionality similar to CQG’s flagship integrated client. She said it’s younger, sleeker and easier to use in what the firm calls the desktop infrastructure. 

As to what’s new in the options space, Moroney discussed the work CQG is doing with CME’s event-based contracts. The collaboration resulted in some new user interfaces for trading,  and CQG has seen an uptake due to CME’s marketing.

CQG is still interested in crypto after the collapse of FTX, but Moroney said the firm will be very  careful about who they work with.  He thinks crypto as an asset class will survive but it will have to retrench. Whatever comes next on the crypto front will have to be more transparent, be more regulated and have more auditability. Brennan agreed, saying she doesn’t think crypto is going anywhere and it is still on CQG’s roadmap.