Setting Up A Trading Arcade

A contact of mine is considering setting up a prop house in London, UK to further expand to Asia. He initially wants to setup to cater for a few senior traders who are already contacts later to extend out more.

Can someone with experience give details on setting up such a place and provide any plans etc.

Any information or help will be fully appreciated

Someone else can surely advise you better, but a few points you'd need to consider:
Clearing relationship with a clearer such as Fortis
Exchange gateway connectivity
Power backup - uninterruptible power supply for all critical services
Software Leasing relationships with ISV's such as TT, CQG, Reuters etc

You'd need to give thought to what will make traders want to take the trouble of changing from where they trade right now - for me, network reliability, latency and data speed are key points, followed by commission costs... with no clear advantages to change, why would a trader move to your new, unproven venture from wherever they are now?

If there is sufficient volume with the senior traders then a clearer may well set you up in your own office and cover costs providing you put the business through them. Office costs depend on where you are based. Regulation will be covered by the clearing company.
Try following clearer's for information:
ADM Investor Services
Kyte Group
Fortis Bank

Thanks for the info. I will pass this along.

TWalker, could you explain further what you mean by the above point.

twalker has mentioned in other threads that if you have a group of traders doing around 1m+ RT's a month then you can approach a major clearer and get a deal where they provide infrastructure and desk space for you providing you put all your trades through that clearer.

Ah right i understand. What this person is looking to do is setup an office startign with a few traders to expanding to supporting new trainees as well as other backed traders. ie a complete new prop house rather than trading at Fortis.

Therefore, any info would help.

PS i am considering about joining Fortis as i am currently stuck in Refco

yep - a few guys have already gone there from what I hear, and quite a few in discussions depending on what happens here - I'm at Refco too.

There was a website that offered all the services to set up your own office, staff, etc. etc,
I can't remember it's name offhand - perhaps someone knows them OR if anyone is really interested I could try and find the address in these pages somewhere ??