People moves: NatWest Markets in senior shake-up, Credit Suisse promotes Blanc, State Street’s new CIO, and more

Latest job changes across the industry

Chris Marks: stepping down at NatWest Markets

Chris Marks is stepping down as chief executive officer (CEO) of NatWest Markets and chair of the supervisory board at the bank’s Netherlands-based subsidiary, NatWest Markets NV.

Robert Begbie, treasurer of Royal Bank of Scotland, will become interim CEO, and join both the NatWest Markets board and NatWest Markets NV supervisory board. Marks will remain in his current position until June.

Meanwhile, Richard Place is leaving his position as chief financial officer at NatWest Markets and his post will be taken up in the interim by treasury finance director Robert Horrocks. Place will remain in his current role until March.

The appointments are subject to regulatory approval.

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Elodie Blanc has been promoted to the newly created role of deputy head of investment banking capital markets (IBCM) at Credit Suisse. London-based Blanc will continue in her current role as IBCM chief operating officer (COO)for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Emea), which she has held since 2018, reporting to Warren Young, global IBCM COO. She will also remain as co-lead on the European Union exit programme. Blanc joined Credit Suisse in London in 2002, and has held several IBCM posts in Emea and New York.

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Brian Franz becomes State Street’s new London-based chief information officer (CIO), reporting to COO Lou Maiuri. Franz moves to the company from drinks firm Diageo, where he was chief productivity officer. He joined Diageo in 2008 as global CIO. Before that, Franz was CIO at PepsiCo International, and held positions at General Electric and AT&T. He has experience in artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics.

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Photo: Citi

Karolina Burmeister

Citi has appointed Karolina Burmeister as country head for Finland, replacing Brodie Donaldson. Burmeister will report to Alexander Stiris, country head for Sweden and head of Nordic corporate banking. She joined Citi in 2018, and previously worked at OP Financial Group in corporate and investment banking.

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Deutsche Bank has named Christian Berendes as head of government and regulatory affairs. He reports to chief administrative officer and management board member Stefan Simon. Berendes succeeds Karin Dohm, who will take on new responsibilities. Berendes is also COO for Germany, a role he will retain, in which he reports to Karl von Rohr, president of Deutsche Bank. Berendes was previously chief of staff to CEO Christian Sewing.

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Aengus Hallinan, group head of operational risk and business continuity at Credit Suisse in New York, has left the company to pursue other opportunities. At Credit Suisse, Hallinan helped spearhead the identification of key ‘survival processes’, such as treasury and funding, which has reduced the number of key controls needed to ensure continuity from the hundreds down to fewer than 10.

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BNY Mellon Markets has appointed Paresh Shah as global COO for the foreign exchange business. Based in New York, Shah reports to Jason Vitale, global head of forex. Shah joins from HSBC, where he was the Americas COO for forex, commodities and corporate sales.

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Markus Schmidt is the new head of Emea emerging markets foreign exchange and rates trading at Crédit Agricole. Schmidt moved to the French bank from Bankhaus Lampe in Dusseldorf, Germany, where he was co-head of financial markets and head of financial markets trading for one year. Previously, he spent seven years at Standard Chartered Bank in London.

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Morgan Stanley has hired Michelle Wang as managing director in the fixed income capital group. Wang is currently on gardening leave after departing Credit Suisse, where she spent 12 years in the debt capital markets and derivatives solutions team. At Morgan Stanley, Wang will report to Damien Matthews, co-head of fixed income capital markets for the Americas.

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Rahul Mani has joined Barclays as a macro trader for South-east Asia in Singapore. Mani moved to the bank from Nomura, where he worked in macro products and liquid markets proprietary trading from 2011. Prior to that, he worked in rates and forex trading at Morgan Stanley for almost two years. Mani started his career as an associate at Credit Suisse in 2006.

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Bill Grant has joined Pimco as a vice-president in the global equity team, reporting to Eden Simmer in New York. Grant was most recently director of synthetic equities trading at Deutsche Bank, which he joined in 2009. He started his career at UBS Securities in Stamford in 2001.

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Photo: copyright ECB

Pedro Gustavo Teixeira: role change at ECB

The European Central Bank has announced it is appointing Petra Senkovic as director-general of its secretariat and Pedro Gustavo Teixeira as director-general of the secretariat to the supervisory board.

Both are already directors-general – in fact, Senkovic is swapping roles with Teixeira. Before taking up her current role, she was deputy director-general of the ECB’s legal services. She holds a PhD in law from Sorbonne University.

Teixeira started work at the ECB in 1999, initially in prudential supervision and financial stability. He holds a PhD in law from the European University Institute.

The pair will exchange roles on February 1.

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Foreign exchange company Oanda has appointed David Grant as COO for Asia-Pacific. Grant will be based in Singapore, and takes on responsibility for overseeing the firm’s administrative and operational functions, as well as improving the efficiency of the business. Prior to Oanda, Grant was Asia-Pacific COO at forex trading firm Gain Capital.

Oanda has also hired Mark Chesterman as head of trading and Lucian Lauerman as head of business solutions. Both report to Kurt vom Scheidt, who has taken on a wider role as COO.

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ASX, the Australian securities exchange, has appointed Robert Woods as a non-executive director. Woods joins from Australian investment firm Challenger, where he was head of strategy and, prior to that, chief executive of the fund management and asset management units. Stephen Knight will replace Woods as chairman of ASX Clear and ASX Settlement. Knight was previously a director of ASX’s clearing and settlement boards. Earlier, he headed NSW Treasury Corporation.

Carolyn Colley has been named non-executive director of ASX’s clearing and settlement boards. Colley is currently a non-executive director of OnePath Custodians, Oasis Fund Management and Smartgroup Corporation, and COO and co-founder of Faethm, an analytics software company. She has held senior executive roles at Macquarie Bank, St George Bank and BT Financial Group.

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Julie Becker has been appointed as deputy CEO of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. Becker joined the exchange in July 2013 and was appointed to its executive committee in 2015. She has spent two decades working in Luxembourg’s financial sector, including positions at the Central Bank of Luxembourg and Dexia.

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Lucas Bruggeman

Lucas Bruggeman will become CEO of Swiss stock exchange BX Swiss on February 1, succeeding Harald Schnabel. Bruggeman moves from Sentifi, a fintech company and alternative data provider, which he joined in 2013. He is currently a partner, responsible for sales and marketing. Before Sentifi, Bruggeman was a member of the board of management at Liechtensteinische Landesbank in Zurich.

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Bakkt, a digital trading and payments company, has promoted Mike Blandina to CEO. This follows the departure of founding CEO Kelly Loeffler, who moves into politics to become US senator for the state of Georgia. Blandina joined Bakkt in 2019, as chief product officer, after working at OneMarket, Westfield, PayPal, Google and Blackhawk Network.

Adam White becomes president of Bakkt, having joined as COO after the firm’s launch in 2018. Prior to that, he worked at Coinbase. White began his career as an officer in the US Air Force.

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Andres Cifuentes has taken on the new role of executive director for institutional sales at cryptocurrency firm BitGo, Risk.net has learned. Cifuentes moved to the company from Cboe Global Markets, where he worked in foreign exchange sales from 2016. He started his career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in 2004, moving to JP Morgan where he worked in prime brokerage for four years. In 2009, Cifuentes joined Morgan Stanley’s forex prime brokerage business unit and worked in forex sales for three years.

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The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has appointed Justin Sok as managing director of the federal advocacy team. Based in Washington, DC, he reports to Jamie Wall, executive vice-president of advocacy. Sok joins from the US Department of the Treasury, where he developed and implemented policy positions, including tax and trade, as a senior adviser in the Office of Legislative Affairs. Prior to that, he served as a policy adviser for several members of the US House of Representatives.

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Su Yen Chia has been named head of Asia-Pacific public policy at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. Chia moves from Euroclear Bank, where she was head of strategy and government affairs for Asia-Pacific, having joined in 2017.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission has chosen David Bottom as its new CIO. Bottom oversees the agency’s information technology systems and security. Previously, he was CIO and chief data officer at the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security. Bottom also worked at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency as head of its information technology directorate and deputy director of enterprise operations for 10 years.

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Law firm Seward & Kissel has promoted Kevin Neubauer to partner. Neubauer joined the firm in 2009. In 2012, he became in-house counsel at Providence Equity Partners before returning to Seward & Kissel three years later.