Buckler Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï
Andrew Lazar
16 October 2025
Andrew Lazar, managing director, head of sales at Buckler Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï, speaks to Carmella Haswell about the firm’s journey, the critical path to success, and embracing an underserved client segment
Image: Andrew Lazar
From a broker-dealer perspective, how do you view the current securities finance market? What particular trends and opportunities are capturing your attention?
The current state of US Treasury cash and repo markets is unique due to the convergence of multiple, complex factors, not just traditional economic data. Historically, monetary policy relied mainly upon inflation and growth expectations as the main drivers of interest rates. Now, increased fiscal spending, geopolitical tensions, and trade policies are heavily informing US monetary policy and market volatility.Â
This administration is being viewed as business-friendly, supportive of financial innovation, and eliminating barriers to commercial growth while keeping required regulatory frameworks in place. This has fostered an environment across developed liquid asset classes of increased investor confidence and participation which has created greater opportunities for market intermediaries like us to be of increased value to our client partners.
The US Central Clearing mandate is set to impact the securities lending and repo markets. How is Buckler Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï preparing its clients for implementation? How does your use of the Agent Clearing Model play into this?
There is clear support for, and momentum towards, the advancement of digital currencies and connectivity to the repo market via securities tokenisation and blockchain execution efficiencies. This likely facilitates faster collateral movement and liquidity, as well as creating broader classes of collateral assets.
As for the US central clearing mandate, as we approach mandatory repo clearance in 2027, questions remain about the continued scalability of the Sponsored model and finer implementation details of the Agent Clearing Model (ACM) which we will offer. The ACM model may not be universal, but it will likely become the dominant design for central clearance of US Treasury repo in our competitive set of market intermediaries.
Focusing on Buckler Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï, can you explore the journey the firm has taken since its inception? Where are you now, and where is the company heading?
Buckler Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï was founded in 2016 and has subsequently grown to become a mid-sized broker-dealer serving clients globally in the US Treasury/mortgage-backed securities (MBS) repo and US Treasury cash trading space. CEO Richard Misiano is well-regarded in our industry and has built several successful securities financing businesses.
Since joining Buckler in 2022, his influence and experience have created a corporate culture that leverages leading edge technology to provide best-in-class service for a growing group of clients. Head of Trading Greg Minard has run multiple repo desks across fixed income asset classes, brings a wealth of experience, and his collaboration with our sales teams has helped ignite our growth velocity. Bringing our C-suite functions inhouse has improved communication and scale. We are becoming well known for repo finance and US Treasury trading ideas, strategy, and execution and are scaling that expertise to our new service offering verticals: correspondent clearing, equity securities lending, and US fixed income prime brokerage. Our mission is to become a trusted commercial partner delivering excellent and differentiated service in the spheres where we choose to participate.
In April, Buckler Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï announced plans to expand its service offerings. How will this extension help move the firm into a more comprehensive platform? And how has client demand shaped the decision to expand?
We are excited about scaling our business into new methods of service provision to existing and new clients. All of which are accretive to our existing service offerings, and we seek to help become a utility for underserved client segments. Equity securities lending is in full growth mode, clearing and prime brokerage are coming on line Q4, and the initial client interest has been excellent. Finally, we are expanding our at-the-money (ATM) equity offering, a method used by publicly traded companies to raise capital by selling newly issued shares directly into the existing trading market at prevailing market prices.
Our clients are discerning and sophisticated and the markets that we participate in have a high barrier of entry but low barrier of exit so providing excellent, consistent, reliable service, and coverage is our priority. In our business speed is life, so leveraging AI and technology platforms is critical to that end. Clients require both technological efficiency and high touch interaction; we seek to deliver against those expectations daily.
Living in a world that is becoming increasingly digital, how is Buckler Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï leveraging technology to create scale? Similarly, where does AI fit into this?
First and foremost, we embrace and leverage technology. We have partnered with academia to help leverage AI internally and create efficiencies that eliminate duplicity of effort. Partnering with leading edge providers creates scale and reliability across common delivery media. Central clearing has garnered most of the attention in the US financing space; there are many other platforms and processes that help add connectivity, resiliency, and surety to the systemically critical US Treasury cash and financing markets.
Looking forward, what will be top of mind for you over the coming 12 months?
The focus is our clients, full stop. It is said that conjecture crushes strategy. We do not guess what the next trend will be; rather we listen to clients regarding their goals, interests, business risks, and build towards durable solutions.
In many cases, it is creating a critical path to success around a client’s existing business execution process or in others it is embracing an underserved client segment. In both cases, we leverage technology and human interaction to deliver superior service. That process is continually evolving.
We have ambitious growth goals. What we are doing now can be improved and scaled to new client partners. We were humbled by the recent Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï Finance Times Award nominations for America’s Repo Team of the Year and New Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï Finance Team; to be short listed with other notable market participants was an honour. Being recognised as a market participant growing in importance as we communicate our mission as a trusted partner delivering first-class execution and service is key to our ambitions and it emboldens us to continue working hard towards executing against our overall development goals.
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