Citadel Securities is suing two former employees after they formed the cryptocurrency market-making firm.
One of the world’s biggest market makers claims that Leonard Lancia and Alex Cassimo began raising capital and created the trading firm Portofino Technologies, while still working at Citadel, with access to proprietary information, According bloomberg news,
The news outlet reported that the Citadel wants a trial to determine the extent of monetary damages and possible restitution.
Lancia and Quasimo “engaged in a brazen scheme to steal Citadel Securities’ trade secrets, lie to their Citadel Securities associates and raid the ranks of Citadel Securities employees,” Bloomberg reported.
According to their LinkedIn, Lancia was Citadel Securities’ head of Europe Systematic Options Market Making and Cassimo worked with Citadel Securities’ business management team.
In an internal investigation, Citadel Securities said it received messages and a pitch deck from Portofino’s early fundraising efforts, months before Lancia and Casimo said they were leaving the firm, Bloomberg reported.
What is Portofino Technologies?
The company describes itself as a “crypto native technology start-up with 35+ employees across 5 global locations”. LinkedIn.
“Portofino deploys its proprietary market-making technology to trade on centralized, decentralized and OTC digital asset markets and provides tokenization services and investments to Web3 companies,” the company said.
citadel was founded in 2001 by billionaire Ken Griffin and has more than 1,600 employees in Chicago and Miami.
The company is a market maker, meaning that it buys and sells securities for its account in order to provide liquidity.
“Market makers make it easy for investors to buy or sell a security quickly or in large quantities. In financial terms, they provide liquidity and depth to the market,” Citadel says on its website. “In times of volatility, market makers provide liquidity and depth when other participants cannot – ensuring that markets remain resilient.