Obituaries
David Wescott, a 30-year member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, died on July 16. Wescott was highly respected in the futures community and one of the longest-serving directors on the board of CME Group. He served as president of the Wescott Group since 1991 and managing partner of the Dowd/Wescott Group since 2006. He was also a founder and partner of Nirvana Technology Solutions.
Longtime Chicago Board of Trade member C.C. Odom passed away in July. He founded Odom Investments in 1968 and served as chairman of the New Orleans Commodity Exchange in 1981. Odom was a CBOT board member at the time of its initial public offering in 2005 and served on the board of CME Group from 2007 to 2014 after its acquisition of CBOT.
Brian Conlon, founder and chief executive of First Derivatives, died on July 28. Conlon started First Derivatives in 1996 in his home town of Newry, located in Northern Ireland between Belfast and Dublin, and took it public in 2002. He began his career at KPMG and also worked at Morgan Stanley and SunGard before founding First Derivatives. Before his business career, he was a Gaelic football player.
People News
Former U.S. Treasury official Heath Tarbert was sworn in as the 14th chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on July 15. Soon afterwards he announced several appointments to key executive leadership positions at the CFTC. Jaime Klima joined the agency from the Securities and Exchange Commission to serve as Tarbert's chief of staff and chief operating officer; Charlie Thornton, who served the previous chairman as head of legislative affairs, will serve as counselor to the chairman; Thomas Benison, who joined from J.P. Morgan, will serve as chief negotiator for international agreements; Chelsea Pizzola will serve as deputy chief of staff, and Michael Short, formerly a press aide in the White House, will serve as director of the Office of External Affairs and chief communications officer.
Tarbert also announced the appointments of several division heads. Malcolm Clark Hutchison will serve as director of the CFTC's Division of Clearing and Risk. Prior to joining the CFTC, Hutchison spent more than three decades in top positions in the futures industry, most recently as global head of listed derivatives at Deutsche Bank. Hutchison also served as a member of the FIA board of directors, a member of a CME risk committee, and a member of the board of directors of Nasdaq Futures. Joshua Sterling, a Washington lawyer, will serve as director of the Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight. Sterling previously was a partner at law firm Morgan Lewis, where he specialized in representing asset managers. Tarbert also brought Andrew Ridenour, a lawyer with expertise in cryptocurrencies, back to the CFTC as senior counsel. Ridenour worked at the agency for nine years, then moved to Coinbase, the cryptocurrency trading platform, as product counsel for institutional products.
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Emily Westerberg Russell will serve as chief counsel for its Division of Trading and Markets. Russell has been a member of the division’s Office of Chief Counsel for a decade, and since 2011 she has served as a senior special counsel in the Office of Sales Practices. She will work under Brett Redfearn, the SEC's director of the Division of Trading and Markets.
The London Stock Exchange Group appointed Isabelle Girolami as chief executive officer of LCH Ltd., its majority-owned U.K. clearinghouse. Girolami will join LCH in November, reporting to Daniel Maguire, CEO of LCH Group. Girolami joined from Crédit Agricole, where she served in several senior roles, including deputy CEO of its corporate and investment banking business and global head of financial markets. Prior to Crédit Agricole, Girolami spent seven years at Standard Chartered in London and Singapore, serving as co-head of the wholesale bank ASEAN and head of financial markets ASEAN. She will replace Martin Pluves, who stepped down in July.
The Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities Markets Standards Board, an independent body formed in 2015 by market practitioners to improve standards of conduct, appointed Martin Pluves as its new chief executive officer starting in October. He will fill the vacancy left when Gerry Harvey, who had been CEO since August 2016, stepped down from the role in 2018. Pluves joins FMSB from LCH Group, where he spent a decade in various senior roles including most recently as CEO of its U.K. clearinghouse.
OCC, the Chicago-based equity derivatives clearinghouse, announced that Susan O’Flynn and Stuart Bourne have joined its board as member directors. O'Flynn is managing director and global head of CCP strategy and resource optimization at Morgan Stanley. Bourne is a managing director and head of Americas asset management services at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
R.J. O’Brien, the largest independent futures broker in the U.S., appointed Simon Prangnell to head the firm’s new Paris-based affiliate, R.J. O’Brien France. Prangnell joined the firm from Coex Partners, the agency broker owned by TP-ICAP, where he had been the head of its French branch. RJO also hired Martin Marchant, who worked with Prangnell at Coex, as an institutional broker and senior vice president in its Paris office.
Andrés Choussy has been named president and chief operating officer of Baton Systems, a fintech startup that uses blockchain technology to improve post-trade operations. Previously, Choussy was the chief executive of Traiana, the post-trade services provider, and the head of trade and portfolio management division of NEX Optimisation. Prior to that he spent more than a decade at J.P. Morgan in various clearing and FX prime brokerage roles.
BNY Mellon Markets promoted Jason Vitale to global head of foreign exchange. He previously served as group operating chief of FX and client execution services head. Before joining BNY Mellon he spent 13 years with Deutsche Bank in various positions, most recently as co-head of listed derivatives and markets clearing for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Vitale replaced Adam Vos, who was promoted to head of BNY Mellon Markets after more than three years of leading the firm’s FX, fixed income and equities trading business.
Trading technology firm Pico has named Emma Wheeler as its chief commercial officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Wheeler joined Pico from Intercontinental Exchange's data division, where she led the European enterprise sales group and EMEA feeds and connectivity sales. Wheeler will report to Pico's CEO Jarrod Yuster and work with Michael Verkuijl, global head of sales, and Marc Hineman, chief administrative officer.
Itiviti, a software company that provides exchange connectivity and trading infrastructure to financial institutions, appointed Gavin Welsh as head of customer success. He will report to Rob Mackay, the chief executive officer, and will oversee customer relations and support offerings. Welsh previously served as global head of client coverage at TradingScreen, a trading solutions provider.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago appointed Sam Schulhofer-Wohl as senior vice president and director of financial policy. He oversees the Chicago Fed's insurance and financial markets teams and its financial stability council. He also serves as a liaison to the New York Fed’s market operations, monitoring and analysis group and on the Chicago Fed’s loan committee. He joined the Chicago Fed in 2016 as a senior economist and research advisor from the Minneapolis Fed.
The Bank Policy Institute, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, named Patrick Parkinson as a special advisor. Parkinson will join the in-house research team and provide strategic advice to BPI’s regulatory affairs team. Parkinson worked for more than three decades at the Federal Reserve and served as the head of banking regulation from 2009 to 2011. More recently he was a managing director at Promontory Financial Group, a consulting firm, where he advised clients on regulatory and risk management issues.
