Karen King Joins BMLL as Order Book Provider Eyes Asian Expansion

Wednesday, 07/01/2026 | 08:00 GMT by Damian Chmiel

The data provider adds an experienced exec to capitalize on regional demand for granular market analytics.

The move follows Nordic Capital's acquisition and the accelerated expansion across nine Asian exchanges.

BMLL Technologies hired Karen King as its new Head of Sales for Asia Pacific, giving the market data company a senior executive to push into a region where it recently added nine new exchange feeds.

BMLL Taps Karen King to Lead Asia Pacific Expansion

King will work from Hong Kong to build BMLL's client roster across the region and shape how the company approaches growth in Asian markets, according to the press release sent to FinanceMagnates.com.

The appointment comes roughly two months after Nordic Capital acquired BMLL in a deal that included existing minority shareholder Optiver.

The timing also reflects BMLL's recent buildout across Asia. Over the past 14 months, the company added data from Shanghai, Bombay, ASX 24 futures and others. Those additions let traders and exchanges compare order book behavior across venues globally, something BMLL CEO Paul Humphrey says creates demand for deeper analytics .

Paul Humphrey, Chief Executive Officer of BMLL, Source: LinkedIn

“Following Nordic Capital's investment in BMLL, we are focused on accelerating the company's next phase of growth,” Humphrey said. “Asia Pacific is a key part of that wider strategy as we aim to better serve our customers across the region.”

This wasn’t the only executive move this week. Former B2C2 sales executive Zeke Vince joined Robinhood as Global Head of Business Development for institutional crypto.

Two Decades of Data Sales Experience

King spent more than 20 years in financial services and data solutions, most recently as Managing Director at S&P Global Market Intelligence after that company merged with IHS Markit. She originally joined through IHS Markit's acquisition of Data Explorers, where she worked with buy-side and sell-side clients across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.

Earlier in her career, King worked in Prime Brokerage at Goldman Sachs in London, covering Southeast Asian clients. That background gives her experience on both the trading floor and the data vendor side of the business.

“BMLL has seen increasing demand from market participants looking to optimize trading strategies, improve execution outcomes and gain deeper insight into market behavior,” King said.

The company introduced its first execution analytics dataset built with direct client input in October, addressing coding challenges that trading firms face when analyzing order flow. In July, BMLL partnered with Ultumus to cut ETF spreads by 16% in initial tests by combining reference data with market analytics.

Broader Push Into Derivatives

BMLL provides what it calls Level 3 data covering global equities, ETFs, futures and US equity options. The company harmonizes this data across venues so researchers can apply statistical techniques without building their own infrastructure to clean and standardize raw feeds.

Humphrey framed King's appointment as part of a larger emphasis on derivatives coverage worldwide. The Nordic Capital deal, completed in October 2025, followed a $21 million investment led by Optiver in October 2024. Before that, BMLL raised $26 million in Series B funding during 2022–2023 and $36 million across earlier seed and Series A rounds.