Legal Counsel

An exciting opportunity exists for an experienced and self-starting financial services lawyer to join the Optiver team in Singapore as the organisation continues to grow and develop new trading opportunities. Singapore is a strategically important location and represents a key part of the Optiver business plan both regionally and globally. Optiver Singapore has a commercial remit to engage in cash, ETF equity derivatives, index, foreign exchange and commodity derivatives trading on Singapore and other Asian and global exchanges and trade directly with institutional counterparties.

Optiver is a leading global electronic market making and proprietary trading business, focused on pricing, execution and risk management. We provide liquidity to financial markets using our own capital, at our own risk, trading a wide range of products.

The APAC region supports trading activities globally from our APAC offices in Sydney, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mumbai, Shanghai and Singapore.

Optiver is proud of its unique organisational culture, which is highly focused on performance and innovation. Optiver has undergone rapid growth in the last 5 years and is now seeking to integrate a globally aligned business model whilst continuing to explore opportunities in new products, new markets and with new counterparties. It is increasingly expanding its capabilities beyond listed trading and into OTC derivatives and the institutional trading space, which leans heavily upon legal support.

The global legal function consists of approximately 30 lawyers, operations specialists and paralegals based variously in Europe, the US and APAC.

Legal has evolved to become a key business partner and advisory function, playing a unique role in both business enablement and risk management.

It supports all first line Trading and Technology business objectives as well as to second line functions such as Compliance, Risk and HR. It advises management on risk and governance and it also provides Company Secretarial services to relevant legal entities.

As the primary legal adviser in Singapore, you will join the APAC Legal team, a team of 10 professionals in the region (including lawyers and corporate secretarial and legal operations specialists). In this role, reporting to the APAC General Counsel (based in Sydney) you will be working with Legal colleagues globally and with the local Singapore management team as well as with local and regional colleagues such as Corporate Strategy, Trading, Compliance and Risk teams.

You will provide subject matter expertise, legal advice and execution support on a range of commercial business initiatives and matters, notably in respect of:

• Legal structuring, risk assessments, regulatory advice, product approvals, contract negotiation/drafting and execution, particularly in respect of the MAS Licensed Singapore trading entity initiatives. This may include onboarding financial intermediaries (clearers/brokers) and counterparties to scale the business.

• Commercial contracting, including software contracts, IT supply contracts and market data contracts.

• Support OTC Product expansion and execution. This may typically include equity options or total return swaps, with a range of underlyings.

• Other strategic business initiatives (such as financing arrangements) to support capital efficiency and scaling.

• Regulatory advisory (working with Compliance teams on interpretation, scoping and risk assessments).

• Ad hoc advice to local management teams and other functions including Procurement, Business Operations, Tax and HR. This will include more general support from time to time on corporate and commercial matters such as employment, IP and data privacy.

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