Daren Cottrell

Daren Cottrell is Head of Digital Asset Products at Aurel BGC, a position he has held since 2020. In that role he led the build of an institutional-grade crypto trading platform, which launched in early 2022. He also holds the title of Director at Aurel Digital.

Cottrell joined what is now Aurel BGC in 2008 via MINT Partners, which was subsequently acquired by BGC Partners. He ran his own business unit within the firm, initially providing bespoke equity sales, broking and execution services to hedge funds and asset managers, before expanding coverage across cash equities, ETFs, single stock options, financial futures and options, commodity futures, money markets and FX. In 2014 his team launched a portfolio advisory and management business serving private banks and ultra-high-net-worth clients. Prior to joining Aurel BGC, Cottrell was a founder partner of Bellwether Brokers, which served as the internal execution arm of London-based statistical arbitrage hedge fund GLC Ltd, then managing approximately $2 billion in assets under management; he headed the trading team responsible for execution across equity, futures, options, FX and commodity products from 2000 to 2008. Before that he spent eight and a half years as a senior futures trader at Refco, specialising in Short Sterling interest rate futures on LIFFE, and prior to that held a trading role in the same instrument at Hill Samuel and Company from 1986 to 1991.