One of the co-founders of block trading specialist Liquidnet Australia has exited the business.

Stephen Zilioli, who co-founded the domestic Liquidnet office in 2008 with Sam Macqueen, left about a fortnight ago to pursue another opportunity in the investment industry, meaning that Macqueen now leads the business’ operations in Australia.

Macqueen said Liquidnet Australia would no longer operate under two co-head and that he had begun searching for a senior sales and relationship management resource to take on the duties left by Zilioli.

“Through the building phase, the co-head structure worked well. There was a lot of work for us to do to build relationships across vendors and stakeholders, and we had complimentary personalities.”

Meanwhile, in recent months the block trader had already surpassed its previous quarterly record for crossing volumes, Macqueen said.

It has almost 200 investors, or ‘members’, using its block trading facility across the globe, of which 49 are based in Australia.

The latest markets it enabled investors to execute block trades in were the Malaysia and Indonesia equity markets.