Saffer Murray Roos is driving the cattle market from the 90s into the digital age

While stock exchanges and marketplaces have embraced digital transformation, it's hard to believe that some sectors have yet to follow suit. One such sector is the cattle market, which has remained largely unchanged since the 1990s. It still features familiar personalities—agents and brokers—alongside the bustling atmosphere of on-the-ground livestock auctions, complete with the mooing of cows in the background. Enter South African Murray Roos, a former executive at the London Stock Exchange, spearheading a digital transformation in the UK's cattle market with his innovative platform, LiveStockEx. In an interview with BizNews, he shared that farming runs in his blood; his family's history in cattle farming in Southern Africa spans several decades. While working in the UK, he acquired a farm in one of England's southern counties and quickly recognised that the existing cattle market was "very antiquated." This inspired him to create an online trading exchange for cattle in the UK. Murray envisions LiveStockEx initially focusing on cattle but also sees potential for expanding into sheep and pig markets on a similar exchange platform..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..The seventh BizNews Conference, BNC#7, will be held in Hermanus from March 11 to 13, 2025. The 2025 BizNews Conference is designed to provide an excellent opportunity for members of the BizNews community to interact directly with the keynote speakers, old (and new) friends from previous BNC events, and members of the BizNews team. Register for BNC#7 here..Watch here.Listen here.Highlights from the interview.Murray Roos, a former executive at the London Stock Exchange, is leading a digital revolution in the UK's cattle market with his innovative platform, LiveStockEx. Having grown up in a family with a history of cattle farming in Southern Africa, Roos brings a unique blend of agricultural and financial expertise to this venture. His platform aims to modernize the UK cattle trade, which has remained largely unchanged since the 1990s and still relies on traditional open outcry auctions. Roos identified several issues with the existing system, including high transaction costs, biosecurity risks from transporting animals, and a large carbon footprint..LiveStockEx offers a solution by allowing farmers to sell cattle online and keep their animals on the farm until they are sold. This reduces transportation, lowers costs, and provides greater price transparency, benefiting buyers and sellers. Unlike other online marketplaces, LiveStockEx facilitates genuine price evolution and transparency, making it the UK's first platform of its kind..Farmers have been receptive to the platform, though adoption is gradual. Roos compares this shift to the digital transformation in the stock market, which took time but eventually gained widespread acceptance. He sees potential for expanding the platform to other livestock markets, including sheep and pigs, and possibly to other countries with similar market dynamics..Roos is excited about the future, emphasising the importance of collaboration and innovation in solving farmers' challenges. He believes that LiveStockEx represents the next step in evolving the livestock market, similar to the past electronic transformation of stock exchanges..Extended transcript of the interview .Linda van Tilburg (00:00:56) .South African-born Murray Roos has an impressive background in finance, having held senior positions at the London Stock Exchange, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank. However, in a bold career shift, he has turned his attention to agriculture and established a digital livestock marketplace called LiveStockEx, aimed at revolutionising cattle sales. We have Murray with us in the BizNews studio. Welcome to BizNews, Murray..So why would an LSE executive be interested in cattle sales? Is farming in your genes?.Murray Roos (01:44) .Yes, it is. Farming is in my genes. My family has a history of cattle farming in Southern Africa for several decades. I've lived in the UK for about 25 years and have had a career in finance for most of that time. In the last few years, I acquired a farm and started livestock farming myself here in the UK. Through that journey, I encountered some of the frictional problems that cattle farmers experience when trying to sell animals in the market. Combining this with my financial markets background, especially my stock exchange experience, led me to create an exchange for online cattle trading here in the UK..Linda van Tilburg (02:30) .What problem are you trying to solve?.Murray Roos (02:36):** .The current market has several issues. It is very antiquated and has been operating in its current form for literally hundreds of years. Livestock in the UK is predominantly traded through open outcry auctions. Farmers take their animals to live auction houses, where they are sold. .The problems include logistics—there is a lot of movement of animals, resulting in a high carbon footprint from transporting them from farm to auction house and then back to a buying farm, supermarket, or wholesale butcher. There's also a biosecurity risk; when animals mix from different regions, the probability of disease transmission increases..Finally, and importantly for farmers in this country, the frictional and transaction costs involved in selling cattle are extremely high. Farmers can expect to pay upwards of 5%, and it's not uncommon to pay 10% or more when trading their cattle at auction houses or through abattoirs. So a combination of transaction costs, biosecurity risks, and carbon footprints has created this problem, which I believe we have a solution for..Linda van Tilburg (03:54) .How would it work? What makes it different from other livestock exchange platforms?.Murray Roos (04:01)* .In the UK, LiveStockEx is the first livestock exchange platform offering genuine price evolution and transparency. Other online marketplaces operate more like classifieds, but this is the first of its kind here. Other countries, such as parts of South America and Australia, have livestock exchange platforms with more price evolution online..The primary goal and difference from the current marketplace is that it allows farmers to keep their animals on their holdings until they sell them. It provides more price transparency so farmers understand what prices they will be trading at and can decide whether to trade. This reduces biosecurity risks and carbon footprints while minimising stress on animals from moving around the country. All of this is achieved at a fraction of the cost for farmers..Linda van Tilburg (05:06)* .How have farmers received it?.Murray Roos (05:11) .The farmers we've spoken to have been very receptive. Starting a new market comes with adoption challenges; convincing market participants of a new technology or market structure takes time. However, we're finding that people are increasingly comfortable transacting online. Many have online bank accounts and use online accounting management software..Indeed, much herd management and farm care is also done online. While there will always be naysayers who claim this will never work or that they will never go electronic, I remember similar conversations occurring around 20 years ago in the stock market when shares were traded much like cattle are today. We all know how that worked out—electronic solutions were made available and refined, leading to a global shift towards online equity markets. We believe the same will happen in this industry as in many others..Linda van Tilburg (06:23)* .Are you removing the social aspect? Farmers might say they want that—like having the mooing in the background and chatting with friends..Murray Roos (06:34)* .There is certainly an element of that. We respect that farmers often see auction houses as meeting points where they share stories and socialise. We're not trying to take that away entirely; we believe an electronic platform is far more efficient for farmers to transact their livestock and conduct their business..Socialising will still occur in pubs, agricultural machinery shows, and livestock auctions, which won't disappear completely. Concerns about eliminating auctions are probably unfounded; we don't see that happening soon..Linda van Tilburg (07:30) .How do you see this growing over the next two to five years?.Murray Roos (07:37).We're proud to say we just conducted our first transaction this week! We are progressing towards fully operationalising our platform. Throughout 2025, we will focus extensively on market adoption and building our network of farmers and buyers in the UK. We're also looking further afield; one of the advantages of our platform is its transferability to other geographies and market types..Wherever there is a marketplace with many sellers and few buyers—like we see in the UK livestock market—our software and exchange platform can effectively apply. Here in the UK, we're starting with cattle due to their strong provenance through the British Cattle Movement Service, but we also see potential for sheep and pig markets on an exchange platform..Linda van Tilburg (08:52) .What about wildlife? For instance, our president, Cyril Ramaphosa, likes trading wildlife cattle..Murray Roos (09:01) .We haven't explored that commercially yet. Our focus is on enhancing existing marketplaces where there's scale; for example, the cattle industry here in the UK is worth over five billion pounds annually. An important requirement for an online liquid marketplace is having many participants on both the buy-side and sell-side—something our platform can effectively connect with..Linda van Tilburg (0…).When we talk about this, I think—seriously—is this the first? Why hasn't there been one before?.Murray Roos (. ).I think it's surprising; in several industries—certainly, with my background in financial markets—the people I speak to and those I've introduced this concept to have all assumed that all exchanges and marketplaces are electronic because we're so used to it in markets like the stock market. The cattle market of 2024 in the UK reminds me very much of the stock market of 1990—with many of the same personas: principles, agents, brokers, high transaction fees, potentially suboptimal practices within marketplaces such as auctions, opacity of data—and moving towards electronics solved many of those problems..However, we take it for granted that those types of markets exist. In many marketplaces and market types, it simply hasn't evolved to that extent yet. For example, within livestock markets in the US, there's a very robust futures market—a deep futures market for different livestock categories—but that hasn't made its way to the UK yet. Hopefully, this type of marketplace can draw on experiences from stock markets over the last 30 years and apply those learnings—especially the better ones—to evolve Livestock's market structure..Linda van Tilburg:.Is there anything you would like to add?.Murray Roos:.We are very excited about what lies ahead! We have a lot of work cut out for ourselves, so please watch this space! We are very open to suggestions and eager to collaborate with people to solve these challenges for farmers here in the UK and anywhere else in the world..Read also:.From pills to mentorship: Navigating modern maturityWood, Iron and Steel: The untold stories of 60 Western Cape shipwrecksThe guy who created Spud' on the return of his 'Frankenstein' … and a musical – John van der Ruit

Saffer Murray Roos is driving the cattle market from the 90s into the digital age

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