BMLL appoints Rob Laible as Head of the Americas

By Edlyn Cardoza

BMLL, one of the leading independent providers of harmonised, historical Level 3 data and analytics, announced the appointment of industry veteran Rob Laible as Head of Americas with plans to open a New York area-based office. The appointment delivers on BMLL’s strategic growth plans for geographic expansion, building on an existing US presence, and meets the increasing client demand for Level 3 data and analytics globally.

“I am thrilled to join the BMLL team at such an exciting time for the business. I have been very impressed with BMLL’s fast growth journey, the caliber of the leadership team and the strength of their product,” said Rob Laible, Head of Americas, BMLL. “Now more than ever, global institutions need to fully understand how markets behave and improve their analytics capabilities to generate alpha more predictably and deliver improved trading outcomes for clients. I look forward to growing BMLL’s presence in the US to better deal with growing customer demands in the region.”

The announcement follows BMLL’s recent investment news, having secured USD 26 million in a fundraise led by Nasdaq Ventures, FactSet, and IQ Capital’s Growth Fund to fuel BMLL’s product development, the acquisition of new data sets, and its geographic expansion.

Rob Laible is a highly accomplished capital markets executive with more than 30 years of experience running global institutional businesses across sales and trading, technology, compliance, risk, and operations. Most recently, he served as Global Head of Equities at Liquidnet, responsible for the firm’s global institutional equities business. Based in New York, his focus has been on providing institutional asset managers with liquidity solutions supported by value-added execution services and advanced analytics to help traders compete in this era of automation and data-driven investing.

Prior to that, Rob held a variety of senior roles, including Chief Operating Officer and Global Head of Execution & Quantitative Services, overseeing the development of Liquidnet’s suite of algos. Before his time at Liquidnet, Rob’s career included working for global organisations such as Macquarie Securities, Nomura, Lehman Brothers, and ITG.

At BMLL, Rob will report to Paul Humphrey, CEO of BMLL, and join the senior leadership team to drive the company’s US expansion, delivering on the firm’s strategic priorities for the Americas and building a US-based team to meet the increasing demand for BMLL’s Level 3 data and analytics capabilities from US-based clients.

 “I am delighted to welcome Rob Laible to the BMLL team. Over the last two years, we have significantly grown the business. We have added Tier 1 clients, including Investment Banks, Exchanges, Buy-Side firms, Academics and Regulators and expanded into the futures market. In Q4 2022 we successfully closed a USD 26m funding round and launched our data visualization product BMLL Vantage,” said Paul Humphrey, CEO of BMLL.

BMLL offers banks, brokers, asset managers, hedge funds, and global exchange groups immediate and flexible access to the most granular Level 3, T+1 order book data and advanced analytics across equities, Futures, and ETFs. This enables BMLL users to accelerate research, optimise trading strategies and generate alpha at unparalleled speed and scale.

Humphrey concluded: “Bringing Rob on board with his seasoned experience will ensure that we continue on our growth journey and expand our capabilities across the Americas, making BMLL Level 3 Data and analytics capabilities available to an increasing number of market participants.”

Specifically for the US markets, BMLL offers more than 7 years of full-depth US order book data via the BMLL Data Lab, BMLL Data Feed, and BMLL Vantage, allowing US customers and European funds trading US stocks access to harmonised, historic Level 3 Data for insights, algo design, and backtesting.