Cash Equity Middle Office, MENA (Assistant Vice President)

Company

Jefferies Group LLC, the largest independent, global, full-service investment banking firm headquartered in the U.S. focused on serving clients for 60 years, is a leader in providing insight, expertise and execution to investors, companies and governments. We offer deep sector expertise across a full range of products and services in investment banking, equities, fixed income, asset and wealth management in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East and Asia. Jefferies Group LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jefferies Financial Group Inc. (NYSE: JEF), a diversified financial services company.

Team

The International Equity Middle Office are a team of 13 people supporting the Equity Sales and Trading department, encompassing the Firm’s market side executions for Europe and the Middle East and all Cash Equity client activity trading globally covered by European and Middle East Sales desks. Trade flows include Cash Equity, ETF, DMA / Algo, Program and Equity Capital Markets. The team is split into Client Services and Trade Support functions.

Role Overview

The Equity Middle Office AVP will support the firm’s MENA equities business from Dubai, acting as a key control and coordination point between Front Office, Operations, Finance, Risk, Compliance, Technology, Custodians, Brokers, Exchanges, and Clearing Houses.

The role will be responsible for managing the post-trade lifecycle for local MENA equity markets, ensuring accurate trade capture, allocations, confirmations, settlements, reconciliations, regulatory reporting coordination, and exception management. The successful candidate will have strong regional market knowledge, a control-focused mindset, and the ability to manage high-volume, time-sensitive processes in a fast-paced trading environment. Market connectivity is split between direct membership in markets such as Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, and brokers for other MENA markets.

This position is suitable for an experienced Equity Middle Office professional with strong knowledge of local MENA market structure, settlement cycles, exchange rules, custody models, and broker/counterparty workflows.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the full trade lifecycle for MENA cash equity products, including trade capture, validation, allocation, matching, confirmation, settlement monitoring, and exception resolution.
• Proactive communication with clients, Sales, custodians and brokers to ensure exceptions are resolved in a timely manner.
• Coordinate with local brokers, custodians, clearing agents, exchanges, and CSDs to resolve market-specific issues.
• Support pre-matching, settlement follow-up, failed trade management, buy-in risk monitoring, and claims handling for MENA markets.
• Ensure all potential issues are escalated to management on a timely basis. Escalation remains a priority at all times.
• Maintain strong understanding of regional settlement cycles, market cut-offs, exchange practices, investor number requirements, and local custody models.
• Serve as a key point of contact for front office, operations, finance, risk, compliance, legal, technology, and external counterparties.
• Respond to queries from trading desks, sales teams, clients, custodians, and brokers in a timely and professional manner.
• Support onboarding of new markets, brokers, clients, custodians, and trading workflows related to MENA markets.
• Continual focus on process re-engineering. Requirement to review and question the validity of processes and functions within the team to ascertain whether processes should be automated in current form, or re-engineered.  Question whether old processes are still required.

Skills and Experience

Essential:

• Strong knowledge of Cash Equity products and post-trade processing, with specific focus on MENA equity market infrastructure and settlement processes
• Familiarity with exchange portals and local market systems across UAE & Saudi Arabia
• Proven experience working within an Equity Middle Office environment, with exposure to various Equity Desks, including but not limited to Cash Equity, ETF, Equity DMA and Equity Program Trading 
• The role will involve meticulous attention to detail and working within tight deadlines. Strong time management skills and the ability to prioritise tasks is essential
• A flexible, hard-working, “can-do” approach is essential to making a success of the role
• Strong written and verbal communications skills are essential
• Proven ability to understand, investigate and resolve issues is essential

Preferred:

• Proficiency with Fidessa, GCTAC, CTM, Fix
• Familiarity with exchange portals and local market systems across Qatar, Kuwait, and Egypt
• Arabic language skills

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