Appointments, promotions and other people news in the derivatives industry
On June 18, the White House announced that President Trump nominated Dino Falaschetti to become director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research. Falaschetti is currently chief economist for the U.S. Congressional Committee on Financial Services, and previously served as a senior economist in President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.
On June 26, Morgan Stanley appointed Mary Schapiro, the former chairwoman of both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, to its board of directors. She served as the head of the SEC from 2009 to 2012, and served as the head of the CFTC from 1994 to 1996. She also spent three years as the chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the self-regulatory organization for the U.S. securities industry. She is currently vice chair of Promontory Advisory Board, part of Promontory Financial Group, a Washington-based consulting firm. She also serves on the board of directors for the London Stock Exchange and CVS Health.
Tokyo Financial Exchange has announced a change in leadership. Nobuyuki Kinoshita, a former high-level official at the Bank of Japan and the Financial Services Agency, was appointed president and chief executive officer. He replaced Shozo Ohta, who had served in that position since 2009. Kinoshita served as an executive director at the Bank of Japan from 2010 to 2014, with oversight of payment and settlement systems, research and statistics, operations, and information system services. Earlier in his career he served as secretary general of the Financial Services Agency of Japan. Most recently he was a senior advisor to Aflac Life Insurance Japan.
Jeffrey Tessler was appointed chairman of Eurex Frankfurt and Eurex Clearing, replacing Hugo Bänziger. Deutsche Boerse’s chief financial officer and executive board member Gregor Pottmeyer was elected vice chairman.
On May 24, the U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Jelena McWilliams as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, clearing the way for her to take office. She succeeded Martin Gruenberg, a Democrat who was appointed by President Obama. McWilliams previously was chief legal officer at Fifth Third Bancorp, a regional bank based in Cincinnati. Earlier in her career she worked in the Senate as an aide to Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who is now the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. In addition to overseeing the federal deposit insurance program, the FDIC serves as a regulator for many U.S. banks and helps set regulatory policy regarding such issues as capital requirements and the Volcker Rule.
The Securities and Exchange Commission appointed Valerie Szczepanik as senior advisor for digital assets and innovation. This newly created role will coordinate efforts across all SEC divisions and offices regarding the application of U.S. securities laws to emerging digital asset technologies and innovations, including ICOs and cryptocurrencies. Szczepanik joined the SEC in 1997 and most recently served as an assistant director in the division of enforcement’s cyber unit.
The SEC also appointed Julie Erhardt as the acting chief risk officer. The CRO position was created last fall by SEC Chairman Jay Clayton after discovering that the agency's EDGAR system had been hacked. Erhardt, who has been serving as deputy chief accountant, will be responsible for coordinating the SEC's efforts "to identify, monitor and mitigate key risks" across the agency, the SEC said.
In other SEC news, Jeffrey Harris, chief economist and director of the division of economic and risk analysis at the Securities and Exchange Commission, left the agency in May to return to academia full time as a professor of finance at American University’s Kogod School of Business. Scott Bauguess, the deputy chief economist, has taken his place on an acting basis.
Karen Wuertz, vice president of strategic planning and communication at National Futures Association, the self-regulatory organization for the U.S. futures industry, has been appointed chair of the International Organization of Securities Commission's Affiliate Member Consultative Committee. The AMCC is comprised of 66 IOSCO affiliate members from 33 jurisdictions, representing exchanges and other market infrastructures, self-regulatory organizations, and investor protection funds and compensation funds. Wuertz, who will serve as chair for two years, has been active in the AMCC for a number of years and recently served as its vice-chair.
Nasdaq named Bill Dague as head of alternative data. He will lead the Nasdaq Analytics Hub, a platform for alternative data that produces actionable investing intelligence. He also will help the Nasdaq team apply new technologies like artificial intelligence to bring analysis to financial markets. Dague has spent four years at Nasdaq, most recently as director of data science.
Joe Raia joined R.J. O’Brien & Associates as managing director, global commodities. Raia is based in New York and reports to Gerry Corcoran, the chief executive officer. Raia joined the company from Goldman Sachs, where he was managing director and global head of commodity futures sales. Earlier in his career he worked at the New York Mercantile Exchange, where he helped create the Clearport platform for energy derivatives traded over-the-counter.
Tradeweb promoted Bhas Nalabothula to head of European interest rate derivatives. He is relocating to London from New York, where he was a director in U.S. rates strategy and business development, focused primarily on Tradeweb’s swap execution facility for interest rate swaps.
Rumi Morales, the former head of CME Group’s venture capital arm, has joined Outlier Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm focused on the convergence of blockchain technology with other next-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence. Morales was named a partner at the firm. She will be based in Chicago and will be responsible for sourcing investment opportunities and relationships with other companies and organizations in the venture capital ecosystem.
Predata, a New York-based data analytics startup that participated in the 2017 FIA Innovators Pavilion, has hired Mars Spencer to serve as vice president for financial markets. He will report to Hazem Dawani, the company's chief executive officer, and will be responsible for promoting the company's predictive analytics platform to financial market participants. Spencer previously worked at FIS and Perseus as well as several startups.
Peter Hutchison joined Thalēs Trading Solutions, an introducing broker based in New York, as managing director of institutional sales. Hutchison previously worked at NEX Group, where he was in charge of global sales of the firm’s futures matching and allocation platform to asset managers and futures clearing firms. Before NEX, Hutchison was head of futures clearing sales and e-commerce for RBS.
Dash Financial Technologies, a trading technology firm specializing in U.S. options markets, hired Glenn Lesko as chief growth officer. He previously was chief executive officer at Bloomberg Tradebook and before that he worked at Instinet, Deutsche Bank and ABN Amro.
Laura Martin was named vice president and counsel for Wellington Management Company in Boston. Martin previously worked as managing director and associate general counsel at SIFMA’s asset management group, vice president in the global compliance division at Goldman Sachs, and a senior trial attorney in the CFTC’s division of enforcement.
Bittrex, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Seattle, has hired Kwon Park as director of business development. Park will start June 1. He joined the company from Delta Strategy Group, a government affairs firm in Washington DC, where he served as counsel.
Matt Lisle left ABN AMRO Clearing Chicago, where he served as chief compliance officer, to join Drawbridge Lending, a Chicago-based startup that is seeking to offer secured lending services to bitcoin investors. He will serve as the company's general counsel.
Former Federal Reserve staffer Anna Harrington joined the Washington office of Barclays as the head of U.S. bank regulatory policy. She worked at the Fed for 10 years, most recently as senior supervisory financial analyst.
Eventus Systems, a provider of regulatory technology solutions for capital markets, appointed three well-known industry veterans to its board of directors: Kim Taylor, former president, clearing and post-trade services at CME Group; Fred Hatfield, former Commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and D. Keith Ross, Jr., executive chairman of PDQ Enterprises and former CEO of Getco, the Chicago trading firm.
