People moves: CRO Landy takes helm at Brevan, SocGen names new Asia chief, Murray out at Bridgewater, and more

Latest job changes across the industry

Brevan Howard's offices in London's Baker Street

Photo: Diamond Geezer

Alan Howard will step down as chief executive of hedge fund Brevan Howard Asset Management before the end of this year. The veteran investor, who co-founded Brevan Howard in 2002, is not retiring; according to a shareholder report, Howard will “focus on his own trading activities” and “remain closely involved” with the firm’s investment strategies after he steps down.

Howard will be replaced as CEO by Aron Landy, who has been with the firm for 16 years. Landy is already listed as Brevan Howard chief executive on his LinkedIn profile – prior to this appointment, he worked as the firm’s chief risk officer. A Brevan Howard spokesperson declined to disclose where Landy will be based in his new role, but at the time of writing the same LinkedIn page lists his location as Geneva.

The CRO position is to be filled by Alexandre Assouline, who currently serves as deputy CRO. Assouline has worked at the fund for six years; prior to joining Brevan Howard, he was regional risk manager for credit and rates trading at Citi and held positions at Credit Suisse and Crédit Agricole. Both Landy and Assouline’s appointments are subject to regulatory approval, according to the shareholder report.

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Meanwhile, rival hedge fund manager Bridgewater has announced that co-chief executive Eileen Murray will step down next year. Her departure is scheduled for the end of Q1, according to a company release. Bridgewater’s other co-CEO, David McCormick, will continue as the firm’s new sole CEO.

Eileen Murray

Murray joined Bridgewater a decade ago – before that she worked for Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Morgan Stanley again; she joined the US bank in 1984 as an analyst, left in 2002 to join Credit Suisse, where she sat on the management committee, and rejoined Morgan Stanley in 2005 as managing director. She became Bridgewater co-CEO in 2013, and discussed her role with Risk.net in a 2017 profile. She will pursue other opportunities following her departure, according to the release. She is currently based in New York.

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Societe Generale’s Asia-Pacific operation will soon have a new chief executive in Gäelle Olivier. Olivier is replacing the business’s outgoing CEO Hikaru Ogata; the latter, according to a SocGen release, has “decided to pursue new projects” outside the bank. Subject to regulatory approval, Olivier will take over on January 2 and join the bank’s group management committee. She was previously the CEO of Axa Enterprises in France, and prior to that designed equity derivatives products at Credit Lyonnais. In her new role, Olivier will be based in Hong Kong and report to SocGen’s deputy CEO Séverin Cabannes.

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Bart Schmeetz will be promoted to ING’s new head of financial markets, the bank has announced. Subject to regulatory approval, Schmeetz will take over from outgoing head Percy Rueber, who is remaining with ING; Rueber will focus on his position as lead for ‘project trade-in-a-box’, a new trading platform for vanilla foreign exchange products the bank is developing. Schmeetz, who joined ING in 1993, is currently sector head for financial institutions. He began his career at the bank as a relationship manager and went on to lead its corporate and financial institutions clients businesses in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America and Asia. In his new role he will report to Isabel Fernandez, ING’s global head of wholesale banking.

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Martijn Bruins

ING has also appointed Martijn Bruins as its new global lead of structured acquisition finance. According to a press release, Bruins will be responsible for “originating new financing mandates” for ING’s private equity clients across the world. He also continues to serve as head of structured acquisition finance in London. Bruins joined ING’s Mexican operation in 1992 and later moved to London, where he managed the high-yield capital markets team. In his new role he reports to Vincent Maagdenberg, global head of lending for ING’s wholesale banking division.

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HSBC Global Asset Management has appointed Shamil Pankhania as a credit portfolio manager in its global bonds team. Pankhania will oversee the firm’s buy and maintain credit investment business and work on general portfolio management for fixed income funds in the UK and globally. Prior to this appointment, Pankhania served as a credit portfolio manager at BlackRock, where he also managed fixed income portfolios. Before that, he worked at Pimco in credit trading. He is based in London in his new role and reports to HSBC Global Asset Management’s head of global bonds, Ernst Osiander.

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In more asset management news, JP Morgan Asset Management has made some changes in its global fixed income, currencies and commodities (GFicc) group. Myles Bradshaw takes over from Ian Stealey as head of global aggregate fixed income strategies, in which role he will serve as a portfolio manager and work on fixed income asset allocation. He is based in London and will report to Stealey, the latter having been promoted to the position of international chief information officer for the GFicc group earlier this year. Bradshaw previously worked at Amundi, where he was also head of global aggregate fixed income. Prior to that he worked as a portfolio manager at Pimco.

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Jill Wight is joining Morgan Stanley Investment Management as managing director of Morgan Stanley Capital Partners, the private equity investment team of MSIM. According to a company release, Wight will also have the title of operating partner; her work will involve overseeing the team’s investment activities in “consumer and healthcare.” She will work with Aaron Sack and Jim Howland – Morgan Stanley Capital Partners’ respective fund head and head of portfolio operations. Prior to this appointment, Wight was head of portfolio operations for The Carlyle Group’s Carlyle equity opportunity funds. She also worked at Goldman Sachs, GSC Group and Bain & Company. Wight’s hiring follows the appointment of Sharveen Seebaluck last month, who joined Morgan Stanley Capital Partners as vice-president of portfolio operations. Seebaluck previously worked as an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company. Both women are based in New York.

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Lynn Bishop has been appointed chief information officer at post-trade infrastructure firm the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. She takes over from Bob Garrison, who has been CIO for eight years and will retire in February 2020. In her new role, Bishop will oversee all of the DTCC’s technology architectures, including post-trade systems, communication channels and IT. As CIO, she sits on the company management committee and reports to chief executive Michael Bodson. Before her latest appointment, Bishop – who has worked for the DTCC for 15 years – was the corporation’s chief development officer. Prior to joining the DTCC in 2004, she worked for consulting firm Accenture. She is based in New York.

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The European Securities and Markets Authority is hiring. The EU regulator has published two job advertisements for posts on its new committee for the supervision of central counterparties. It is currently seeking a chairperson plus two independent committee members. The establishment of the committee follows amendments to the European Market Infrastructure Regulation requiring Esma to directly supervise “third-country” CCPs; along with the vacant posts, the committee will comprise the “competent authorities” of EU member states that are home to clearing houses as well as representatives of central banks.

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Kristina Littman has been named as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chief of the division of enforcement’s cyber unit. The unit, says the SEC, focuses on protecting investors and markets throughout the US from “cyber-related misconduct”. Littman replaces Robert Cohen, who left the commission in mid-2019. She joined the SEC’s enforcement division in 2010, and has since served in its market abuse unit and trial unit. She is a senior adviser to the SEC’s chairman, Jay Clayton. Before joining the SEC, Littman worked as a lawyer in Philadelphia and as a judicial clerk in New Jersey. She remains based in Washington.

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Next year, Finbarr Hutcheson will vacate the post of president of Ice Clear Europe. He will depart the firm by the end of March 2020. Hutcheson began the role in October 2017, having served formerly as president of Ice Benchmark Administration. He joined Ice in 2013, when the exchange acquired NYSE Euronext.

Finbarr Hutcheson

The firm is currently seeking a new president, a spokesperson says. Hutcheson worked as the chief executive of NYSE Liffe from 2011, where he oversaw the business’s fixed income, currencies and commodities operation. Prior to that, he spent 15 years at Goldman Sachs; his roles included global head of futures services business development for the securities division. Before joining Goldman, he worked at Fimat International Banque in Dublin.

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Andrew Aziz has departed market information and analytics firm IHS Markit, where he was global head of financial risk analytics. He has taken up a new role as executive vice-president of business development at wealth management startup d1g1t, a provider of risk analytics tech. Aziz’s new role involves responsibility for partnerships, pre-sales and financial engineering. Before joining IHS, he worked as director of financial engineering, research and on-cloud solutions for IBM. Prior to that, he was director of financial engineering at Algorithmics and also taught on York University’s financial engineering programme in Toronto. D1g1t is also based in Toronto.

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Alex Knight has joined blockchain settlement firm Baton Systems as its new head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Previously, Knight was a managing director at Citi, where he worked from 2015 as global head of sales and client coverage in the bank’s foreign exchange prime brokerage business. He spent 18 years at Citi in total, before which he worked for SS&C Technologies as head of European sales. He is based in London.

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Fintech Wematch – a recipient of funding from both JP Morgan and Societe Generale – has named Jack Jeffrey as the new chairman of its board. Jeffrey previously served as CEO at both MTS and EBS, two major providers of electronic trading platforms. Prior to that, he was global head of foreign exchange options at Citigroup and has sat on the respective foreign exchange committees of the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve.

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Proprietary trading firm OSTC has announced Corey Smalley as its new head of strategy and change. Prior to this appointment, he worked as a strategic adviser in the European Union and was a lieutenant-colonel in the British army. Smalley now reports to OSTC chief executive Lee Hodgkinson and is based in London.

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Digital assets settlement firm Koine has named Martin Halblaub the new chair of its advisory board. Halblaub, who previously served as chief executive of the Swiss digital asset marketplace SIX Digital Exchange, will assume his new role on January 1.

Martin Halblaub

According to a statement from Koine, Halblaub’s appointment is the first in a series as the company assembles a “global” advisory board. Before stepping down as SDX CEO in August this year, Halblaub served as a senior advisory at DWP Bank and as president of the Hannover Stock Exchange. He will be largely based in London, a spokesperson says.

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Tradition, an interdealer broker of over-the-counter products, has announced the appointment of Angus Wink to an unspecified “senior management role”. Wink will assume his new post in early 2020, according to the company, and will report to co-heads Mike Anderson and Dan Marcus. Wink currently runs his own eponymous consulting firm; in the past, he held several positions – ultimately becoming chief executive for Europe, the Middle East and Africa – at broker Tullett Prebon.

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Following advisory firm Chatham Financial’s acquisition of the JCRA Group – a London-based company which also advises clients on financial risk – Jackie Bowie will become one of Chatham’s co-heads of Europe. The other co-head is Brian Conly, who also serves as a managing partner and global head of private equity and infrastructure. Bowie will remain chief executive of JCRA, where she has worked for 15 years, and will be based in London. Prior to joining JCRA, Bowie worked as an equity fund manager at Aegon Asset Management; before that, she managed funds for Murray Johnstone.

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In crypto news, NextHash Group – a London-based digital asset firm which runs the Nexinter cryptocurrency trading platform – has chosen a new special adviser for UK regulation in Mark Kelly. Kelly previously worked as head of compliance for the UK at digital exchange Coinbase, a position he held from January to October of this year. Before that he was a director at Abide Financial, now CME Regulatory Reporting, and served in audit roles at Lehman Brothers, Barclays and Salomon Brothers. He began his career as a consultant at Price Waterhouse.

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After 23 years in the industry, Ilia Bouchouev retired last month as the president of Koch Global Partners and global head of derivatives at Koch Supply & Trading. Bouchouev is well known in commodity circles for his options pricing models and his pioneering trading record.

Ilia Bouchouev

He joined Koch in 1997 as an options trader, and three years later set up global energy market-making operations. He went on to launch the energy market’s first volatility swap in 2003, helped spawn and develop the market for calendar spread options, and led the company’s global macro trading and interest rate trading.

In January, Bouchouev will begin teaching a course he has devised on energy derivatives trading for a Master of Science in Mathematics in Finance at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He will also remain involved in the market as a private consultant.