Tower Research hired an ex-equities portfolio manager to manage its risk

A lot of people want to work in an electronic trading firm. Many of them are willing to work in a non-investment role to do so, but it's a rarer case for someone with a history in the front office to join the middle. Pierre Danilowiez, formerly of SocGen, has done just that to work for Tower Research.

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Danilowiez joined the firm's Amsterdam office as a senior risk manager. He was most recently head of investments for Arbra, a multi-family office. His LinkedIn states that the role involved asset allocation for the firm's various investment teams, and the development of the firm's risk framework, which would lend itself well to a pure risk role. His role also involved "directly managing $100M+ multi-asset portfolios," which seems much more front-office oriented.

Before that, he was a trader for 15 years. He spent five years as a portfolio manager at asset manager Key Capital Partners, where he claims to have managed a €30m AUM strategy in equities. He also spent a decade at SocGen, where he was a VP in equity derivatives trading. 

Danilowiez is a Grande École mathematics and engineering graduate. French-educated equity derivatives specialists are highly sought after right now; In London, Optiver hired Barclays MD Arnaud Heckenroth as head of exotics business development, suggesting that there's further room for algo firms to expand in the already competitive world of equity derivatives.

Tower seems to prefer hiring support staff to traders right now. In 2025 accounts for its UK entity filed with Companies House this week, the firm revealed that headcount in its 'trading' unit fell by 18 while headcount in 'support/management' rose by seven. Tower did not respond to a request for comment on whether it made any cuts, or whether any staff were reassigned from a trading role into support.

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