Michael Sparkes, regional head for EMEA at Virtu Analytics, has retired. Sparkes’ first job in the City was in 1980 at a pension fund.
“I went from Cambridge University to British Airways as a management trainee, and fairly quickly settled into the Investment Department of the internally managed British Airways Pension Fund,” he says. “I ended up as Head of International Equities there, and on to Commercial Union, which became Aviva.”
Michael Sparkes and son Alex
Michael is best known in the City for driving the development of trading analytics and transaction cost analysis over the past 20 years, a process in which he was an intrinsic part, since joining agency broker ITG in 2006.
Always modest, and keen to share credit with the team, he has been a constant presence at TradeTech and other major industry fora through his career, delivering an expert view on everything from the microstructure of the trading process to the big-picture thematic elements guiding regulation.
When ITG was acquired by Virtu in 2019, its analytics capabilities – and team – were a major reason for the takeover, and as CEO Doug Cifu noted that year to analysts, “A key driver of our performance in ‘Execution Services’ was the growth in multi-asset class analytics subscribers.”
A pillar of the business, Michael has also been a great colleague to work with, based on the many faces who came to his leaving do at the end of July, including numerous clients and Kevin O’Connor, head of Virtu Analytics, who made the trip from New York just to see Michael off.
Several attendees were surprised to learn that retirement was still possible in the financial industry.
Michael’s son, who saw his father face-off against the trash talk and snarling of such on-stage titans as Richard Balarkas and Peter Randall back in the day, has opted not to work in finance himself. Instead he has chosen a career at the more genteel ‘Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment’.
With fewer Sparkes in the City, there was still plenty of warmth on Michael’s departure, some great anecdotes, and universal well wishes for a long retirement.