People moves: senior swaps at HSBC, new CEO for Nomura, and more

Latest job changes across the industry

HSBC has made a number of changes to its senior staff. Hubert Preschez has stepped down as co-head of global banking, and has been replaced by Jean-Manuel Richier, who will also serve as head of investment banking for continental Europe. Richier is also currently CEO of HSBC Switzerland, and will remain so until a replacement is found. Frédéric Coutant, the other global banking co-head, will remain responsible for the firm’s corporate bank. Richier will work alongside Coutant, and will have oversight of the bank’s activities in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (Benelux), Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Nordic countries, Spain and Poland. He’ll relocate to Paris for his new role, according to an internal memo viewed by Risk.net.

Jean-Manuel Richier

Photo: HSBC

Richier was first hired by HSBC in 2013, initially serving as vice-chairman of global banking for France. He became CEO of the bank’s Swiss arm in 2015. Prior to joining HSBC, he was a senior managing director at investment manager Blackstone. Before that, he worked for Citi, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, where he held the respective positions of co-head of investment banking for France, head of equity capital markets and debt capital markets for France and Belgium, and executive director of investment banking.

Richier will report to Jean Beunardeau, CEO of HSBC continental Europe, and Philippe Henry, the soon-to-retire head of global banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (see below). Richier will also have “additional accountability” to Adam Bagshaw, global co-head of advisory and investment banking coverage. He will become a member of the HSBC continental Europe executive committee.

HSBC has also hired Lisa McGeough, who will take over from Philippe Henry as head of global banking for Emea. She’ll begin work on July 15, 2021. In February this year, Henry announced his intention to retire, and is set to leave the firm “mid-year” 2021, according to a company memo. McGeough will oversee regional product teams and first-line risk management with a focus on credit, reputational, compliance and financial crime risk. She will be responsible for the institutional clients group, and will chair the bank’s capital allocation committee.

McGeough worked for Wells Fargo for 16 years, most recently as head of its international unit. Previously, she’s served in roles including head of financial institutions, head of the industrials group for Wells Fargo Corporate Banking, head of Wells Fargo Securities for Emea, and senior relationship manager.

Lisa McGeough

Photo: HSBC

Prior to joining Wells Fargo, McGeough was a director of high-yield sales at Morgan Stanley and a managing director at TD. She began her financial career in the 1980s as an analyst at Salomon Brothers, since acquired by Citigroup. In her new role, she’ll report to co-head of global banking and markets Greg Guyett and Colin Bell, CEO of HSBC Europe.

Bell has also joined the board of directors of fintech start-up Quantexa. The firm specialises in artificial intelligence-assisted data analytics, and examines customer and transaction data for suspicious activity.

He joined HSBC in 2016 as group head of financial crime risk, and says the bank has been working with Quantexa to “develop an AI solution which will help us to better identify financial crime”.

Bell’s board role replaces that of another senior HSBC staffer, global risk chief operating officer and global head of risk analytics Ray O’Brien. O’Brien joined HSBC in 2004, and was as a member of the executive committee for technology services within Global Banking & Markets, where he managed a number of business areas, including global transaction banking, global banking, operations, risk and finance software, and change delivery. He moved to the global risk function in 2012.

He began his career at Kleinwort Benson as an equities trading systems developer and in 1990 moved to Nomura, within futures and options trading. Two years later, he joined BNP Paribas, before moving to the risk area at Deutsche Bank in 1996.

Finally, HSBC has named climate scientist Celine Herweijer as group chief sustainability officer. She will begin work in July this year, reporting to HSBC Group CEO Noel Quinn.

Herweijer currently works for PwC, where she is a partner, leading the firm’s work on sustainability and innovation, as well as sitting on the global corporate responsibility board. Previously, she’s been a director at catastrophe modelling specialist Risk Management Solutions, where she led the climate and catastrophe risk consulting unit. Prior to that, she was a director at the Lighthill Risk Network, a lecturer at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and a consultant at the United Nations’ division for sustainable development.

---

Japanese bank Nomura has hired a new chief executive officer and president for Nomura Securities International and Nomura Global Financial Products. Christopher Willcox, formerly chief executive of JP Morgan Asset Management, was due to begin work on May 3, 2021. He will also serve as co-CEO of Nomura Holding America. Willcox’s hiring comes as the firm seeks to grow its presence in the US, according to a company release.

His last role was CEO of JP Morgan Asset Management, retiring from the position in 2019. Prior to that, he was head of global fixed income and liquidity at the same firm, and global head of rates for JP Morgan’s investment bank. Before joining JP, Willcox had a 15-year career at Citi.

Sameer Jain

Photo: HSBC

Nomura has also appointed Sameer Jain chief information officer for the firm’s wholesale arm. He will oversee the firm’s activities in wholesale IT and operations, and will work on digitalisation of the business. Jain will also join the executive committee of the wholesale arm.

Previously, he has worked for Barclays and UBS, where he spent 13 years at each company. At Barclays, Jain held positions including chief information officer for Barclays Investment Bank and chief technology officer for Barclays Group. At UBS, his roles included head of structured rates and credit technology, and head of credit and emerging markets technology.

Jain is based in New York, and now reports to: Jonathan Lewis, chief executive officer for Nomura International; Steve Ashley, head of the wholesale division; and Yo Akatsuka, president and now co-CEO of Nomura Holding America, alongside the newly hired Willcox.

---

Citadel Securities has appointed Heath Tarbert chief legal officer. He takes over from Steve Luparello, a former top regulator who led the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s trading and markets division. Citadel Securities is a proponent of hiring influential former regulators: Tarbert was most recently the chairman and chief executive of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a post he left in January. Tarbert, who was appointed to head the regulator by former president Donald Trump in 2019, began work at Citadel Securities on April 5.

Tarbert announced his intention to leave the CFTC in December 2020, saying he wanted to “clear the way” for the new president, Joe Biden, to choose a replacement.

Tarbert has previously worked for the US Department of the Treasury, where he was acting undersecretary for international affairs and assistant secretary of the Treasury for international markets. He’s also worked as: an acting director at the World Bank; a partner at Allen & Overy; and clerked for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas.

---

Mark Branson

Mark Branson, former head of Swiss financial markets regulator Finma, has been nominated by German finance minister Olaf Scholz to lead his country’s financial regulatory authority, Bafin. Branson left Finma on April 30.

He replaces former Bafin president Felix Hufeld, who left the regulator in January this year, following the Wirecard scandal. Branson will begin in the middle of 2021, according to a press release from the German Federal Ministry of Finance.

“We want to continue the reform of Bafin so that financial supervision has more bite,” said Scholz. Branson has led Finma since 2014, and chairs the resolution steering group of the Financial Stability Board. Prior to joining the Swiss regulator, he was chief financial officer for UBS’s wealth management and Swiss bank division. Before that, he was CEO of UBS Securities Japan, and before joining UBS, he worked for Credit Suisse.

---

Nasdaq has appointed Kate Morgenstern as head of sales for Nasdaq Risk, the exchange operator’s technology platform aimed at banks and brokers for managing clients’ financial and operational risks. She joined the firm in March, and is based in London.

Morgenstern joins from software vendor Fincad, where she was a senior enterprise sales executive from 2017. Before that, she worked in equity derivatives sales for UBS in London, and before that in structured products sales at Investec.