Optiver

Optiver was co-founded by Johann Kaemingk on April 9, 1986[4] as a market maker in options on the European Options Exchange (EOE), which is now Euronext.[5] Optiver opened its first foreign locations in the early 1990s, with offices in Paris, Frankfurt, and London. They opened an office in Sydney, Australia in 1996. Optiver is a market maker that buys and sells financial instruments through a stock exchange, at a minimum margin (the spread), which provides market liquidity.[6]

Optiver initially set up U.S. offices in Chicago in 2001.[7] In 2003, Optiver closed most floor trading activities to focus on screen trading. Optiver has received more than 50% of its revenues from branches outside of the European Union since 2012. It opened an office in Shanghai in 2013.[4] Because Optiver is based in the Netherlands, it is one of the few top trading firms in the world required to disclose its earnings, showing that the company remained profitable through the 2008 financial crash.[8] Optiver was voted the best workplace in Australia by BRW in 2013.[9] Employees of Optiver have gone on to create their own trading companies, such as Flow, and Wintermute in 2019.[10]

Optiver is a member of the European Principal Traders Association (FIA EPTA),[8] FIA Principal Trading Group (PTG) in the US and FIA Japan.[11] In 2019 Optiver partnered with US competitor Virtu to invest in Equiduct.[12]