MAS Markets Hires ATFX Australia Head Simon Naish to Lead Asia-Pacific

MAS Markets has appointed Simon Naish as its head of Asia-Pacific, the London-based liquidity provider announced on Tuesday. Naish, who started in the role in October and is based in Sydney, takes over the seat vacated by Harry Fry at the beginning of the month and will lead the firm's institutional push across the region.

Fry had overseen Asia-Pacific for MAS Group for close to four years and joined Edgewater Markets on 1 October as managing director for Australia. His successor arrives from ATFX, where he had served as country head in Sydney since November 2023 — a position he took up months after ATFX acquired Rakuten Securities Australia.

Naish brings three decades of FX experience. He spent 33 years at National Australia Bank, joining as a foreign exchange trader in London in 1987 and later running the bank's FX business across Asia-Pacific, according to his LinkedIn profile. After leaving NAB in 2020, he spent a year consulting before taking on FX business development at market maker Velocity Trade. He is the second ATFX executive MAS has recruited this year, following the June appointment of Matt Porter, formerly head of operations for ATFX's UK institutional desk, to head of operations.

"There's a genuine appetite in APAC for what we're offering," Naish said in the statement. MAS said he will work alongside the group's senior leadership on regional sales and team building. The Sydney desk he inherits was assembled under Fry, who in March 2025 hired Olivia Zhang, previously an institutional sales executive at CMC Markets, as head of sales for the region.

Regional expansion and the Solid deal

Founder and Chief Executive Simon Blackledge said Naish would lead "this critical phase of our regional expansion." Fry originally joined in 2022, when the company still operated as BidX Markets.

MAS provides margin liquidity in FX, commodities, metals and indices to brokers, hedge funds and family offices, and reported that turnover nearly doubled to £6.13 million in 2025. In July, MAS Group took a stake in spot FX market maker Solid as a first step toward a full takeover, unwinding a 2022 arrangement in which Solid had acquired 9.9% of MAS. Blackledge continues to own more than 75% of the business, which is authorized by the UK Financial Conduct Authority and runs its infrastructure from the LD4 and TY3 data centers.