Mako Trading

Mako built its name in interest-rate options: Bund, Bobl, BTP, Euribor, Short Sterling, the unglamorous core of European rates. Trading since 1999 out of London, it only relaunched an equity derivatives desk in 2018, a tell that rates, not equities, were always the home turf.

The firm runs two partnerships, one for principal market making and one (MFM) for institutional execution, and holds regulatory licenses across the UK, Australia, and the Netherlands to match its exchange memberships. The genuinely odd footprint is Chengdu: a China trading office is rare for a mid-sized European market maker, and Mako has one. Its edge sits in a pricing and risk platform built in-house over two decades and run across European, Asia-Pacific, and American venues.