Hitesh Mittal, the trader who sued ex-employer ITG, is launching his own firm

Stock
traders wearing Y2K glasses celebrate at the last trading day
1999, where closed up with the historic record of 17,091 points,
in the floor of Sao Paulo’s Stock Exchange.
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

• Hitesh Mittal, the former trading head who recently
  sued broker ITG, is looking to make a big comeback with a new
  trading technology company.
• Mittal plans to launch the new firm in the next few
  weeks, he told Business Insider. 
• The company is aiming to replace brokers in a key area:
  execution. 

Hitesh Mittal, the former hedge fund trading head who recently
sued broker ITG, is looking to make a big comeback with a new
trading technology company he’s been working on for the past
year. 

Mittal claimed in a suit that ITG made him out to be a crook,
which caused him to be fired from a new job at top quant shop AQR
Capital Management. 

In 2015, ITG paid more than $20 million in a settlement to
the Securities and Exchange Commission. The regulator
accused ITG of betting against clients, despite having said
it would not do so, in a pilot program known as “Project
Omega.” Mittal accuses ITG of placing blame of the project
onto him which resulted in his subsequent termination from
AQR. 

Now, Business Insider has learned that Mittal has been working on
his own firm since August 2017. Mittal told Business Insider in
an interview that his firm, BestEx Research Group, is preparing
to launch its first product in the coming weeks. 

The company would replace brokers — like his former employee ITG
— in a key area: execution.

Typically, when a money manger is looking to get a trade done
they go to a broker. Then, that broker uses its technology to
figure out how that trade will get best executed. 

Mittal’s plan is to provide algos to investment firms — such as
hedge funds and other asset managers — which they can use instead
of the technology provided by a broker. The broker would just be
responsible for routing the trade to an exchange. 

He says that the company’s goal is to lower costs for asset
managers because they don’t have to spend time and money building
those algorithms in-house.