People moves: Nomura’s Ashley takes on sole wholesale role

BGC Partners’ chief exec resigns; Barclays’ Kotecha moves to UBS; new liquidity role taken at JP Morgan; and more

Steve Ashley: expanded responsibilities

Nomura has made Steve Ashley its sole head of wholesale and global markets. His previous role was co-head of wholesale and head of global markets. Ashley co-headed the wholesale division alongside Kentaro Okuda, who is now regional head of Americas.

Ashley joined Nomura from RBS in 2010 as global head of rates. Later, he assumed additional responsibilities for the global forex business.

He will be based in London and report to Tetsu Ozaki, group chief operating officer.

Other changes at Nomura include the appointment of Rig Karkhanis as head of global markets for Asia excluding Japan, in addition to his role as chair of global emerging markets. He is based in Singapore.

In addition, Tokyo-based Norikazu Akedo has become global head of equities.

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The chief executive of BGC Partners’ swap execution facility (Sef) has resigned, Risk.net has learned. New York-based James Cawley stepped down as head of BGC Derivative Markets in February after nearly two-and-a-half years in the job.

Chief operating officer Angelo Toglia has been appointed interim chief executive of the Sef business until a permanent replacement is found. A spokesperson for BGC declined to comment.

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The former head of Barclays’ Asia equity business, Vikesh Kotecha, is to move across to UBS in Hong Kong, where he will head the Swiss bank’s Asia-Pacific equity derivatives unit. He takes over from Michel Lee, who will continue to run UBS’s equity capital markets corporate solutions business in the region.

Kotecha has led Barclays’ Asia equity team since 2010, but the desk was effectively closed in January 2016 as part of a restructuring. He will report to Dushyant Chadha, global head of equity derivatives, and Taichi Takahashi who heads up equities for the region.

UBS has also recruited Stephane Petermann, Societe Generale’s Hong Kong-based head of equity volatility trading, who will perform the same role at the Swiss bank.

Hirofumi Takaku, who currently runs the firm’s Japan equity business, will relocate to Hong Kong as head of equity derivatives structured sales in Asia-Pacific.

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Patrick Moisy has been appointed to the newly created position of global head of liquidity and trading services in custody and fund services (CFS) at JP Morgan. He will be in charge of risk activities within CFS – including agent lending, depositary receipts, liquidity and collateral management – and moves from his previous role in capital and funding across investor services and equities globally.

He will report to Teresa Heitsenrether, global head of CFS.

JP Morgan has also hired David Raccat for Moisy’s team as global head of CFS liquidity and forex. He will be based in London. Before joining JP Morgan, Raccat was global head of markets services and head of Asia-Pacific markets and financing services at BNP Paribas Securities Services.

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BlackRock has hired Timothy O’Hara as co-head of its global credit division. He will serve in his new role in tandem with Jim Keenan, who leaves his position as head of fundamental credit. O’Hara will be responsible for the business side of the unit, while Keenan becomes chief investment officer of global credit.

The pair will be based in New York and report to Mark McCombe, head of the BlackRock alternative investments business.

O’Hara left Credit Suisse last September after a 30-year career during which he rose to the position of head of global markets and US chief executive.

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Citi’s Quentin Andre has been given global responsibility for equities structuring for investor clients, in addition to his existing position of global head of equity solutions sales.
Andre will report to Dan Keegan and Murray Roos, co-heads of global equities, and also join the equity markets executive committee.

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Daniel J Davis has been named general counsel for the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Stepping in to replace acting general counsel Rob Schwartz, Davis comes to the commission from New York-based law firm Proskauer Rose. There, Davis served as special counsel in the firm’s labour and employment law department.

Prior to his appointment at Proskauer Rose, Davis was a member of the administrative law and regulatory practice, labour and employment practice and litigation practice divisions at Los Angeles-based Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Between 2006 and 2007, Davis also served as counsel to the assistant attorney general of the US Department of Justice civil division.

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Michael McClain, chief operating officer of the Options Clearing Corporation, left on March 31, after working there for 16 years, according to a spokesperson for the world’s biggest equity derivatives clearer.

The spokesperson added that McClain was leaving “for personal reasons”, but declined to say who will succeed him.

Previously, McClain served as president of the Options Clearing Corp, in addition to overseeing technology and operations. Before joining the firm, he worked at IBM and Accenture. He has also held positions on the operations and technology steering committee of the Securities Industry Financial Markets Association and at the Futures Industry Association.

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Glenn Lesko, chief executive of Bloomberg Tradebook, has left the electronic agency broker, said a spokesperson, who declined to provide further details, including the reason for his departure and his replacement.

Before joining the company, Lesko was in charge of client strategy, and US international and product sales at Instinet. Earlier in his career, he worked in senior positions at CF Global Trading, and on the trading desks of Deutsche Bank and ABN Amro.

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HSBC has appointed Mark Tucker as group chairman to succeed Douglas Flint. After working with Flint on the handover during September, Tucker will assume his new responsibilities in full on October 1.

Tucker is currently group chief executive and president of AIA Group Limited, a pan-Asian life insurance group, as well as a non-executive director at Goldman Sachs. Previously, Tucker was chief executive of Prudential and a non-executive director on the court of the Bank of England.

HSBC has also named Hossein Zaimi as global head of equities, replacing Patrick George. Zaimi joined the bank in 2004 as head of foreign exchange derivatives for Asia-Pacific. In 2009, he became head of forex and commodities for the same region, and was made regional head of trading for global markets in 2014.

Zaimi will be based in Hong Kong and report to Thibaut de Roux, global head of markets, and Gordon French, head of global banking and markets for Asia-Pacific.

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Dan Watkins has become the new head of BNY Mellon Markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, moving from a consultant role at the bank. He replaces Richard Gill, who announced his retirement earlier this year.

London-based Watkins reports to Michelle Neal, president of BNY Mellon Markets, and Michael Cole-Fontayn, the bank’s chairman for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Earlier in his career, Watkins worked at JP Morgan and Jardine Fleming, and he co-founded LatentZero, a provider of software to the buy side.

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Derivatives marketplace CME Group has named Jacob Frenkel as the newest member of its Competitive Markets Advisory Council (CMAC), an in-house think-tank tasked with developing and providing policy advice to the CME’s board of directors on market issues.

Frenkel is currently chair of the board of trustees for the Group of Thirty, a private international non-profit made up of financial industry leaders. He is also chair of the board of governors of Tel Aviv University and chair of JPMorgan Chase International.

Frenkel joins CMAC with an extensive background in finance, having previously served five years as vice-chairman of AIG, four years as chair of Merrill Lynch International and two terms as governor of the Bank of Israel. Prior to that, he was the economic counsellor and director of research at the International Monetary Fund, and served as the David Rockefeller professor of international economics at the University of Chicago.

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Crédit Agricole has named Ivan Hrazdira as global sponsor of US dollar debt capital markets (DCM). He previously led flow sales in global macro products.

Based in New York, he reports to Mike Kendrot, head of DCM Americas, and Sébastien Domanico, global head of DCM.

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Credit Suisse has appointed Christian Berchem as chief executive of its UK private banking business.

He will report to Claudio de Sanctis, head of international wealth management for Europe. Philip Harris, who has led the UK private banking business over the past three years, will remain chief executive until Berchem steps into his new role in June. Harris will then become senior client adviser within the UK private bank.

Berchem spent the past five years at Barclays Wealth in the UK, most recently as head of the private bank for London. He will continue to be based in the capital.

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Intercontinental Exchange has added two directors to its board: Ann Cairns and Duriya Farooqui.

Cairns chairs the Ice Clear Europe board of directors and is acting president of international markets for MasterCard. In the past, she held senior positions at ABN Amro and Citigroup.

Farooqui currently serves as executive director of the Atlanta Committee for Progress, which brings together leaders from different sectors to work on issues facing the city.

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Rosenthal Collins Group, a Chicago-based independent futures clearing firm, has appointed Hilton Sheng to the newly created position of president of the structured products division.

He will operate out of the firm’s New York office, reporting to president Maureen Downs.

Prior to joining Rosenthal Collins, Sheng served as senior vice-president in the structured products unit at RJ O’Brien & Associates.

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MarketAxess, an electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, has recruited Christophe Roupie as head of Europe and Asia for MarketAxess Europe, as well as for Trax, a subsidiary providing capital market data, trade matching and regulatory reporting services to the global securities market.

Roupie will be tasked with growing the firm’s businesses in Europe and Asia. Reporting to Rick McVey, chief executive of MarketAxess, Roupie will work alongside Scott Eaton, chief operating officer for MarketAxess Europe and Trax.

Previously, Roupie was global head of trading and securities financing at Axa Investment Managers.

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Adam Clayton has been named head of investment banking at ADS Securities. Based in Abu Dhabi, he will report to chief executive Philippe Ghanem. Before joining ADS Securities, Adam was co-head of securities sales for the Middle East and North Africa at Goldman Sachs.

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GreenKey Technologies, a trading-centric voice software provider, has appointed Nader Shwayhat as chief executive, based in New York. He succeeds Paul Christensen, who was based in London and left the firm earlier this year.

Before joining GreenKey as a strategic adviser last year, Shwayhat was global head of sales and business development at Novus Partners. Earlier, he co-founded Pivot, an instant messaging start-up for financial markets, which was acquired by CME Group.