People moves: Credit Suisse senior shake-up, BofA retirements, and more

Latest job changes across the industry

Credit Suisse headquarters, Zurich

Mariam Rafi will take the helm at Citi’s clearing business as part of a senior management shake-up following the departure of global co-heads of clearing and FX prime brokerage, Chris Perkins and Sabrina Wilson.

Rafi, who joined from Deutsche Bank in 2011, previously headed Citi’s clearing division for North America. She was formally given additional responsibility as global head of financial resource management for the futures, clearing and FXPB (FCX) division in October last year.

Mariam Rafi

Risk.net understands that the reorganisation of the clearing division is ongoing, and titles for many of the senior executives may change once the process is complete.

Perkins, who joined Citi in 2008 and founded the firm’s global over-the-counter business, is set to join cryptocurrency investment firm CoinFund as president and managing partner. His co-head Wilson, who joined in 2017 from Deutsche Bank, has also left the bank, Risk.net learned from sources shortly after Perkins’ departure.

Perkins and Wilson took the reins of Citi’s FCX division in October 2020, following the departure of veteran clearing head Jerome Kemp.

The latest departures come after a February reorganisation of the clearing division, which brought FCX under Fater Belbachir, the bank’s global head of equities. Belbachir joined the bank from Barclays in August 2020.

Rohit Verma, head of the Asia-Pacific (Apac) region in the FCX division also left the bank in July to head Apac for clearing house LCH.

Citi was an early mover in the aftermath of the financial crisis and subsequent push towards central clearing, cementing its position as a swaps market powerhouse. The most recently available US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data shows Citi’s funds in separate cleared swaps segregation totalled $32.9 billion, making it the market’s biggest swaps clearer by those metrics.

In addition, Nathan Sheets has returned to Citi as its global chief economist. In 2014, he left the bank, where he was global head of international economics, to serve as undersecretary of the US Treasury for international affairs under president Barack Obama. Prior to returning, Sheets was chief economist at PGIM Fixed Income.

Lastly, Citi has recruited Dhiren Shah as chair for global technology mergers and acquisitions (M&A). He joins from Credit Suisse, where he was head of financial sponsors M&A, focusing on the tech sector, for six years. Before that, Shah spent a decade at Greenhill and almost two decades at Morgan Stanley, where he led the global technology investment banking division.

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Photo: Geraint Roberts

Alexei Kondratyev

Standard Chartered’s global head of data science and innovation Alexei Kondratyev has joined the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) as quantitative research and development lead. The appointment is the latest in a series of marquee quant hires by the huge Emirati sovereign wealth fund.

The fund, which manages some $650 billion on behalf of the emirate, also hired veteran physicist Alexander Migdal. Kondratyev and Migdal join Marcos Lopez de Prado, global head of the fund’s quantitative research and development team, who joined the fund in September 2020.

Prior to joining Standard Chartered in 2010, Kondratyev completed stints at Barclays and Dresdner Bank. His work includes topics such as trade compression, credit valuation adjustments and ‘mutation’-assisted machine learning. In 2018, he won the Risk.net Quant of the Year award for innovative research work on curve dynamics.

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Tom Montag

Bank of America will part ways with two senior executives who were central to the bank’s post-financial crisis transformation.

Tom Montag, who currently serves as BofA’s chief operating officer and global head of banking and markets, will retire at the end of this year. The bank’s vice-chair, Anne Finucane, will also retire at the end of 2021.

Anne Finucane

Montag joined BofA in 2008 when it merged with Merrill Lynch, where he served as head of global sales and trading for less than a year. Prior to that, he spent 22 years at Goldman Sachs, where he held a number of executive roles.

Finucane joined BofA in 2004 as chief marketing officer when the bank acquired FleetBoston Financial. Finucane is currently chair of the board of Bank of America Europe, where she leads the bank’s environmental, social and governance (ESG), sustainable finance and public policy efforts.

The bank had not named their successors at the time of publication.

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Wells Fargo’s veteran head of markets, clearing and futures execution, George Simonetti, has departed the bank. Simonetti left in June after a 27-year career with Wells, which culminated in him taking the bank’s top clearing role in 2012.

A Wells Fargo spokesperson did not comment on Simonetti’s successor before publication. Risk.net understands the bank appointed an interim head in March as part of a transition plan.

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The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has hired Brian Oliver as its head of business development for digital assets, based in New York. His most recent role was at IHS Markit as managing director of global sales and account management.

Oliver left Citadel Securities in 2020, where he spent four years as head of fixed income commodities and currency sales and relationship management for Europe and Asia. He previously headed Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Emea) derivatives clearing and collateral management sales for JP Morgan, and held business development roles at CME Group.

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Mizuho International, the London-based securities and investment banking arm of Mizuho Financial Group, has expanded its fixed income sales and trading businesses with a series of new appointments.

The bank has hired Stephen Busby as head of convertible bond trading, from investment bank Stifel Nicolaus. Guy Cornelius joins as head of UK credit sales, while Lu Fu is appointed head of e-sales and digital transformation. Jonathan Smith will head fixed income IT.

Other sales appointments comprise: Nick Holt in Emea credit sales; Julian Moosuddee for UK rates sales; and James Wall in structured solutions sales.

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UniCredit CIB has reshuffled its global markets team. Within trading, Fabio De Zordo will be responsible for equity and brokerage trading franchise.

Tong Lee will extend his oversight to include commodities as well as fixed income and currencies, which he already leads.

Carsten Wolfheimer will lead a new product line in cross-asset financing as part of the bank’s initiative to grow its secured financing division.

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Capital markets fintech Nivaura has appointed Scott Eaton its new chief executive, as founder Avtar Sehra takes the role of president. Eaton joins from bond market software company Algomi, where he was CEO from 2018.

Nivaura, which creates digital bond issuance technology, was founded in 2016 by Sehra. Still privately owned, the firm has attracted outside investment from the London Stock Exchange Group, which uses the technology for its recently launched multi-dealer euro medium-term note marketplace, Flow.

Nivaura’s technology also underpins an automated digital bond issuance platform recently launched by DBS Bank of Singapore.

Eaton left Algomi in 2020 following the company’s sale to BGC Partners. He was previously chief operating officer for MarketAxess.

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Credit Suisse has hired Orazio Tarda as global co-head of fintech in its investment banking capital markets and advisory businesses. Tarda will report to Brian Gudofsky, global head of technology, and Giuseppe Monarchi, global head of media and telecoms, according to a memo seen by Risk.net. Tarda joins from HSBC, where he was global head of fintech for investment banking.

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LMAX Global, the broker-dealer for foreign exchange and crypto currency trading, has appointed Andreas Wigström in a new role leading international sales and distribution for the group’s regulated broker. He joined LMAX Group in 2010.

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The Bank of England has appointed Huw Pill its chief economist and executive director for monetary analysis. Pill, who succeeds Andy Haldane, will also become a member of its Monetary Policy Committee. Prior to joining the central bank, Pill worked as a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School for three years. He was previously chief European economist at Goldman Sachs, and has held senior posts at the European Central Bank. Pill first worked for the Bank of England between 1990 and 1992 as an economist.

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The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues to make senior appointments under chair Gary Gensler’s new leadership. YJ Fischer has been appointed as director of the office of international affairs. Fischer previously served in various roles at the US State Department during Barack Obama’s presidency, including as assistant co-ordinator for implementation of the Iran nuclear agreement. Most recently, Fischer served as the global head of YouTube product policy at Google.

Barbara Roper will also join as a senior adviser to Gensler, focusing on retail investor protection, including broker-dealer oversight, investment adviser oversight and examinations. Roper previously served as the director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America (CFA).

Sanjay Wadhwa has been appointed the SEC’s deputy director of the enforcement division. He most recently served as the senior associate director of the enforcement division in the New York regional office. Wadhwa joined the SEC as a staff attorney in 2003.

Joseph K Brenner, who was the enforcement division’s chief counsel for a decade, has retired from the role. During his tenure, he oversaw the process of providing legal and policy advice on potential enforcement actions and other critical issues for the division’s leadership and 1,400 staff.

Jay Clayton, the former chair of the SEC, has been appointed to the advisory board of crypto infrastructure provider Fireblocks. The digital asset custody and settlement firm targets exchanges, custodians, banks, trading and lending desks, and hedge funds as its clients. After leaving the SEC in 2020, Clayton accepted a role at Apollo Global Management as lead independent director, and joined the advisory board of crypto asset manager One River Asset Management.

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The US’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has appointed staffer Darrin Benhart its first climate change risk officer. In the newly created role, he will promote improvements in climate change risk management at its regulated banks.

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Credit Suisse Group will nominate two new members to its board of directors. Axel Lehmann and Juan Colombas will be nominated as non-executive board members at an extraordinary general meeting on October 1.

The nominations form part of the bank’s ongoing effort to “enhance our culture of risk management and personal responsibility, and accountability”, says António Horta-Osório, chairman of Credit Suisse.

These efforts come in the wake of twin scandals including a $5.5 billion loss stemming from collapsed family office Archegos, and the liquidation of $10 billion of funds backed by insolvent supply chain finance firm Greensill Capital.

Lehmann was most recently a member of UBS Group’s executive board, as president of personal and corporate banking, and president of UBS Switzerland. He is poised to chair the risk committee, succeeding Richard Meddings, who held the role on an interim basis following the departure of Andreas Gottschling in April.

Colombas is currently non-executive director and member of the audit and risk committees at ING Group. Before that, he was chief risk officer and then chief operating officer at Lloyds Banking Group between 2011 and 2020.

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The broker-dealer arm of Cowen has expanded its global alternative equity strategies team with four senior hires poached from Olivetree Financial. The new joiners previously worked with Mark Kelly, Cowen’s recently appointed global head of alternative equity strategies.

Tarquin Orchard has been appointed managing director, and Sebastian Greensmith joins as a director and sales trader. Charlie Hawkesworth also joins as a director and sales trader, while Alastair Mankin is vice-president for event-driven analysis and sales.

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JP Morgan has restructured its global custody business, with two new people reporting to Hannah Elson, head of global custody.

Tom Casteleyn will lead the Emea global custody business. Based in Brussels, he joins after 16 years at BNY Mellon, most recently as global head of custody.

Scott Markowitz will be head of direct custody for the Americas, covering the US, Latin America and Canada, and will be based in New York. Markowitz spent four years at HSBC, where his most recent role was head of securities services for the Americas.

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Elizabeth Corley joined Schroders as a non-executive director and designated chair on September 1. She will succeed chair Michael Dobson subject to shareholder approval at the company’s annual general meeting on April 28, 2022. Before this, she will resign from non-executive director positions at Morgan Stanley and Pearson. Corley’s 45-year career has included the top job at Allianz Global Investors.

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Michael Cross

HSBC Asset Management has appointed Michael Cross its global fixed income chief investment officer (CIO), effective 1 September. Based in London, he succeeds – and will report to Xavier Baraton – who has been promoted to global CIO. Cross was previously the vice-chair of institutional business at HSBC, after being hired in 2015 as global head of official-sector institutions.

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Devi Shanmugham has joined Tradeweb as global head of compliance. She joins from Bloomberg, where she was chief compliance officer for Bloomberg Swap Execution Facility.

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State Street has appointed new country heads for three European markets. Andreas Niklaus, who has been chief operating officer at Munich-based State Street International since 2006, will become Germany country head.

Dagmar Kamber Borens will lead State Street’s business in Switzerland. Most recently, she was CEO and country head of Quintet Private Bank Switzerland.

Riccardo Lamanna will lead the Luxembourg business, having previously headed State Street Global Exchange’s Alpha Business Development for Emea.

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Miray Muminoglu

Miray Muminoglu has been hired by Lloyds Bank to head its financial institutions debt capital markets and securitised products. Muminoglu moves from Barclays, where he led term funding within the group treasury unit.

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RBC Capital Markets has hired Aakash Mohan to lead its consumer products banking team. He will join from Mizuho, where he was head of consumer and retail for Europe for the last five years. Mohan is based in London, and will report to Ed Boyce, head of Emea consumer products and retail investment banking.

RBC has poached John Miles from Citi to run its European alternative and private capital solutions (APCS) initiative. At Citi, he ran structured credit sales for Emea.

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SmartStream Technologies, a transaction lifecycle management firm, has hired Mark Morris as its head of sales for managed services. Prior to joining SmartStream, Mark worked on transaction lifestyle projects for JDX Consulting. Morris will report to the vice-president for managed services, Nick Smith.

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US-based index provider MerQube has hired Julien Chuard as head of products. He joins from JP Morgan’s institutional quantitative index strategies structuring division, where he was also head of products.

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Delta Capita, a provider of managed services, has hired Oliver White as head of sales. In this new role, he will focus on the firm’s client lifecycle management offering. White was previously head of UK sales for Fenergo and Avox.

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The European credit rating company Scope Group has made new appointments to its supervisory board. Inès de Dinechin joins as chair after a 25-year career including the roles of CEO at Aviva Investors France, CEO of Lyxor Asset Management and various senior positions at Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking.

Chantal Schumacher also joins Scope’s supervisory board, and will chair the newly created audit committee. She formerly worked for Allianz Group for more than 20 years in various global management positions including group chief financial officer.