Market maker in the context of "Goldman Sachs"

UBS Group AG (stylized simply as UBS) is a Swiss multinational investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland, with headquarters in both Zurich and Basel. It holds a strong foothold in all major financial centres as the largest Swiss banking institution and the world's largest private bank. UBS manages the largest amount of private wealth in the world, counting approximately half of The World's Billionaires among its clients, with over US$6 trillion in assets (AUM). Based on international deal flow and political influence, the firm is considered one of the "biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world". UBS is also a leading market maker and one of the eight global 'Bulge bracket' investment banks. Due to its large presence across the Americas, EMEA and Asia–Pacific markets, the Financial Stability Board considers it a global systemically important bank and UBS is widely considered to be the largest and most sophisticated "truly global investment bank" in the world, given its market-leading positions in every major financial centre globally.

UBS investment bankers and private bankers are known for their strict bank–client confidentiality and culture of banking secrecy. Apart from private banking, UBS provides wealth management, asset management and investment banking services for private, corporate and institutional clients with international service. The bank also maintains numerous underground bank vaults, bunkers and storage facilities for gold bars around the Swiss Alps and internationally. UBS acquired rival Credit Suisse in an emergency rescue deal brokered by the Swiss government and its Central bank in 2023, following which UBS' AUM increased to over $5 trillion along with an increased balanced sheet of $1.6 trillion.

An electronic communication network (ECN) is a type of computerized forum or network that facilitates the trading of financial products outside traditional stock exchanges. An ECN is generally an electronic system accessed by an electronic trading platform that widely disseminates orders entered by market makers to third parties and permits the orders to be executed against them in whole or in part. The primary products that are traded on ECNs are stocks and currencies. ECNs are generally passive computer-driven networks that internally match limit orders and charge a very small per share transaction fee (often a fraction of a cent per share).

The first ECN, Instinet, was created in 1969. ECNs increase competition among trading firms by lowering transaction costs, giving clients full access to their order books, and offering order matching outside traditional exchange hours. ECNs are sometimes also referred to as alternative trading systems or alternative trading networks.

A multilateral trading facility (MTF) is a European Union regulatory term for a self-regulated financial trading venue. These are alternatives to the traditional stock exchanges where a market is made in securities, typically using electronic systems. The concept was introduced within the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), a European Directive designed to harmonise retail investors protection and allow investment firms to provide services throughout the EU.

Article 4 (15) of MiFID describes MTF as a “multilateral system, operated by an investment firm or a market operator, which brings together multiple third-party buying and selling interests in financial instruments – in the system and in accordance with non-discretionary rules – in a way that results in a contract”. The term 'non-discretionary rules' means that the investment firm operating an MTF has no discretion as to how interests may interact. Interests are brought together by forming a contract and the execution takes place under the system's rules or by means of the system's protocols or internal operating procedures.

Investment banking is an advisory-based financial service for institutional investors, corporations, governments, and similar clients. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by underwriting or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of debt or equity securities. An investment bank may also assist companies involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and provide ancillary services such as market making, trading of derivatives and equity securities, FICC services (fixed income instruments, currencies, and commodities) or research (macroeconomic, credit or equity research). Most investment banks maintain prime brokerage and asset management departments in conjunction with their investment research businesses. As an industry, it is broken up into the Bulge Bracket (upper tier), Middle Market (mid-level businesses), and boutique market (specialized businesses).

Unlike commercial banks and retail banks, investment banks do not take deposits. The revenue model of an investment bank comes mostly from the collection of fees for advising on a transaction, contrary to a commercial or retail bank. From the passage of Glass–Steagall Act in 1933 until its repeal in 1999 by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, the United States maintained a separation between investment banking and commercial banks. Other industrialized countries, including G7 countries, have historically not maintained such a separation. As part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd–Frank Act of 2010), the Volcker Rule requires some institutional separation of investment banking services from commercial banking.

A primary dealer is a firm that buys government securities directly from a government, with the intention of reselling them to others, thus acting as a market maker of government securities. The government may regulate the behaviour and number of its primary dealers and impose conditions of entry. Some governments sell their securities only to primary dealers; some sell them to others as well. Governments that use primary dealers include Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.