Obituary
J. Robert (Bob) Collins, co-founder and former managing member of Rosenthal Collins Group, passed away on Sept. 10 at the age of 77. Collins was instrumental in driving the success of RCG within the futures industry and was inducted into the FIA Futures Hall of Fame in March 2017 in recognition of his life-time work and achievements.
Collins was born into the futures business and had more than five decades of experience in futures, asset management, finance, banking and real estate. His father, John F. Collins, co-founded RCG predecessor firm Greene & Collins at the Chicago Open Board of Trade in 1923. Collins joined the firm in 1961 and subsequently led it through two successful mergers to form what became Rosenthal Collins Group, a futures commission merchant with operations in Chicago, New York and London.
Collins was a long-time member of the Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange and New York Mercantile Exchange, now all part of CME Group, and of the New York Board of Trade, now ICE Futures U.S. Formerly president of the MidAmerica Commodity Exchange, he served as a board member of the CBOT and the Millennium Trust Company, as well as a governor and vice chairman of the former Board of Trade Clearing Corporation. He also served on the board of directors of Bancorp Financial, parent company of Evergreen Bank Group.
People News
Valdis Dombrovskis is set to retain his role as the European commissioner for financial services, after president-elect Ursula von der Leyen unveiled her proposed line-up of commissioners on Sept. 10. Dombrovskis, the former prime minister of Latvia, is currently vice president for the euro and social policy, while also overseeing financial services – a responsibility added when the U.K.’s Jonathan Hill stepped down following the Brexit referendum. Under von der Leyen’s administration, which will begin at the end of this year, Dombrovskis will continue to oversee EU financial affairs as part of a wider remit as executive vice president for “an economy that works for people”. He will be supported by the Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union.
Italian Socialists and Democrats (S&D) MEP Irene Tinagli has been appointed chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON), replacing Roberto Gualtieri, who became Italy’s finance minister at the beginning of September. Her selection was the result of a power-sharing deal that took place during the summer between Spanish and Italian members of the S&D group, in which Gualtieri was given the ECON chairmanship in exchange for Italian support to make the Spanish MEP Iratxe Garcia the S&D president. Tinagli was elected to the European Parliament in May 2019 and was a member of the International Trade Committee. An economist by training, she was elected to the Italian parliament in 2013. Prior to this, she taught and conducted research at the University Carlos III in Madrid.
TP ICAP has appointed Amir Zaidi as global head of compliance, based in New York. Zaidi previously worked at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission for nine years in a variety of roles, most recently as director, Division of Market Oversight (DMO), where he led a team of 90 staff to oversee derivatives platforms, swap data repositories and the CFTC’s market intelligence initiatives. He was also legal counsel and policy advisor for two commissioners and special counsel for the DMO. Prior to the CFTC, Zaidi worked at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and at Arnold & Porter. At TP ICAP, he will report to Philip Price, executive director and group general counsel.
Marty Chavez, the co-head of Goldman Sachs’ securities division is stepping down at the end of the year after nearly 20 years at the investment bank. He will be replaced by Marc Nachmann, who was previously co-head of the global investment banking division. Chavez, who headed Goldman’s push to digitize the business, joined the bank in 1993 as a senior energy strategist in the commodities division. He moved to Credit Suisse in 1997 and then co-founded energy trading software company Kiodex, before rejoining Goldman in 2005, where he served in several positions that blended his technology experience with trading and investment banking roles. He was chief information officer from 2014 until 2017 and chief financial officer until last year.
CloudMargin, a provider of cloud-based collateral and margin management services, has appointed Karl Wyborn to the new role of global head of business development. Wyborn, who has served as CloudMargin’s global head of sales for nearly four years, will continue to report to Stuart Connolly, CloudMargin’s CEO. Before joining the company in 2015, Wyborn was EMEA head of new business development and relationship management for NetOTC, a market utility for the non-cleared OTC derivatives space. Before that, he worked at JP Morgan for 18 years in London and Hong Kong in a variety of positions, including head of sales and relation management for clearing, custody and collateral services for the EMEA region and Asia Pacific regional head, securities clearing and collateral management.
U.S. electronic market maker Virtu Financial has hired and made changes to its senior management team. Brett Fairclough has been promoted to chief operating officer and global head of business development at the firm, where he has worked since 2007. He previously led the Asia Pacific operations for five years and before that was the chief compliance officer of Virtu’s broker-dealer subsidiaries. Virtu has also hired Marc Rosenthal as executive vice president of strategy and corporate development. Rosenthal spent 22 years at Morgan Stanley, most recently as a managing director in the bank’s equity division and a senior member of its electronic trading management team. In other moves, Alex Ioffe has joined as chief financial officer, replacing Joseph Molluso. Ioffe was most recently CFO of Interactive Brokers Group’s U.S. broker-dealer subsidiary. Molluso left Virtu to join technology provider Capitolis as CFO, reporting to chief executive and founder, Gil Mandelzis.
Nick Granger will join Pacific Investment Management Co. (Pimco) as managing director and portfolio manager, quantitative analytics in the first quarter of 2020. He will be based in the company’s headquarters in Newport Beach, Calif. and will report to Mihir Worah, managing director and chief investment officer – asset allocation and real return. Granger will lead Pimco’s quantitative team and work with the firm’s 255-plus portfolio managers. Granger was previously chief investment officer at Man AHL, a division of Man Group, as well as a portfolio manager of Man AHL’s flagship systematic multi-strategy program. As a member of the Man Group executive committee he worked with then-chief executive officer Emmanuel Roman, who is now Pimco’s CEO. Granger joined Man AHL in 2008, initially to lead the firm’s systematic volatility trading strategies before being appointed co-head of research.
Pico, a provider of data center infrastructure, exchange connectivity and cloud technology, has appointed Francis Troise to its board of directors. Troise most recently served as the president and CEO of agency brokerage Investment Technology Group (ITG), leading the vision and strategy of the company that culminated in its acquisition by Virtu Financial earlier this year. Prior to ITG, Troise was managing director and global head of JP Morgan’s Cross-Asset Execution Services. Before that he held senior manager positions in electronic trading at Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers.
Former CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo has joined the board of advisors to the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a trade organization for the blockchain and digital asset community. This is the second position Giancarlo has assumed since leaving the CFTC in July 2019. On 10 Sept., the American Financial Exchange announced that Giancarlo would be an independent director on its board of directors. Giancarlo served as the 13th chairman of the CFTC after being unanimously confirmed in August 2017. Before entering public service in 2014, he served as the executive vice president of interdealer broker GFI Group and as executive vice president and US legal counsel of Fenics Software. He also held partner roles at law firms Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner and Giancarlo & Gleiberman.
The Financial Stability Board has appointed Ryozo Himino, vice minister for international affairs at the Japanese Financial Services Agency, as chair of the FSB Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation (SRC), for a two-year term starting on Sept. 1 2019. Himino succeeds Norman Chan, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, who has served as SRC chair since April 2017.
The Financial Conduct Authority has appointed Kate Collyer as its chief economist. Collyer, who is chief economist for energy and market frameworks at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and joint director of analysis at BEIS, will assume her new role at the City regulator in October. As well as managing the FCA’s economic research and analysis, the chief economist jointly heads the wider Competition and Economics Division.
