Nausicaa Delfas, executive director of international and interim chief operating officer of the UK Financial Conduct Authority, is leaving to join the Financial Ombudsman Service as interim chief executive and chief ombudsman. Mark Steward, the FCA executive director of enforcement and market oversight will take on additional responsibility for international. The FCA previously announced that BlackRock's Stephanie Cohen will join the FCA as chief operating officer in early June. Delfas will join the Financial Ombudsman Service on 17 May and will be in post while the FOS board carries out the recruitment process for a permanent chief executive and chief ombudsman.
Miami International Holdings, the parent holding company of the Miami International Securities Exchange (MIAX), has appointed Mark Bagan as executive vice president, US futures strategy. Bagan will also continue in his current role as president and CEO of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, an MIH subsidiary. In addition, Joseph Ferraro has been named president of MIAX Futures, focusing on the development, launch and marketing of new products including financial, crypto and agricultural products. He will also continue in his role as senior vice president, deputy general counsel of MIH. Bagan and Ferraro join Mark Wetjen in overseeing the company's futures expansion efforts. Wetjen was named CEO of MIAX Futures in 2020, in addition to his role as executive vice president, futures and innovative products of MIH, and executive regulatory liaison officer.
In other moves, MIH has hired Matthew McFarland as vice president, derivatives products and business development of MIAX Futures, and Thomas Jarck as vice president, proprietary product development of MIAX Futures. McFarland previously worked at Cboe Global Markets for 13 years, most recently as vice president, head of futures. Jarck most recently served as a volatility products consultant to MIAX and previously worked on several equity index volatility trading desks at banks including Citi, Deutsche Bank and Nomura.
FIA has named Sharon Shi Ning, managing director at G.H. Financials (Hong Kong) Limited, as the Asia regional advisory board chair. She succeeds Ian Nissen, APAC head of futures, clearing and FX prime brokerage at Citi. The Asia regional advisory board is comprised of business leaders representing a cross-section of the association's membership and provides input to FIA's board of directors on topics of regional importance to the industry.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has appointed Prashant Yerramalli, Heather Slavkin Corzo, Kevin Burris, and Scott Schneider to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s senior staff. Yerramalli will continue to serve as the SEC’s chief of staff, a role he has held since January. Corzo has been appointed policy director. She was previously the director of capital markets policy at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the head of US policy at the Principles for Responsible Investment, and a senior fellow at Americans for Financial Reform. Burris has been named counselor to the chairman and director of the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. He joins from the US House Committee on Financial Services, where he served as the director of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Schneider has also been appointed counselor to the chairman as well as director of the Office of Public Affairs. He previously was the managing director of financial communications at global consultancy Ketchum.
The SEC also announced the appointment of Jessica Wachter as chief economist and director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis. Wachter joins from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where she has been a professor since 2003 and is a leading academic researcher on financial markets. Wachter replaces S.P. Kothar, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was appointed chief economist in March 2019 and stepped down in January.
The US Department of the Treasury has named John Morton as climate counselor. Morton will lead the Treasury's newly created Climate Hub and will report directly to and advise Secretary Janet Yellen on a range of climate matters. Most recently Morton was a partner at Pollination, a climate change advisory and investment firm. He was a presidential appointee in the Obama Administration and served as White House senior director for energy and climate change at the National Security Council. In this role, he had overall responsibility for coordinating the Obama Administration’s policies and strategies on international energy and climate change issues.
The UK's FCA has appointed Sacha Sadan as director of environment, social and governance. In the newly created role, Sadan will develop and advocate for the FCA’s approach to sustainable finance domestically and internationally. He joins from Legal and General Investment Management where he was director of investment stewardship. Elsewhere, the regulator has appointed Ian Alderton as chief information officer and Ian Phoenix as director, intelligence and digital. Alderton will permanently take up the role of CIO, having joined the FCA on a temporary basis in January. He is responsible for driving a technological change program designed to help the FCA regulate the 60,000 financial services firms under its remit. Phoenix will lead the enhancement of the FCA’s intelligence and surveillance capabilities.
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing has hired Lisa O’Connor as managing director, head of post-trade change, reporting to Glenda So, head of post-trade. O’Connor will be working across HKEX’s clearing and settlement system initiatives, helping to leverage new technology to expand HKEX’s post-trade services. She joins from financial messaging services provider SWIFT, where she held several senior roles, most recently as head of capital markets strategy, global. Previously, she served as head of standards and capital markets for Asia Pacific.
OCC, the world's largest equity derivatives clearing organization, announced that Craig Donohue has been re-elected as executive chairman of the board. In addition, Maria Chiodi, managing director, general counsel department at Credit Suisse Securities, Thomas Frank, executive vice president and CIO of Interactive Brokers, and Stephen Luparello, general counsel at Citadel Securities, have been elected as Class II member directors of the board. Thomas Cardello, founding member, Venice Financial Management, and economist Alice Patricia White have been elected as Class III public directors. The terms of all directors expire in 2024.
EuroCCP, the pan-European equity clearinghouse owned by Cboe Global Markets, has made changes to its senior management lineup. Arnoud Siegmann, previously chief risk officer at EuroCCP and its predecessor EMCF, has been appointed chief operating officer. Jonathan Tran, who joined EuroCCP in 2018 from LCH, will take over from Siegmann as chief risk officer having worked previously as deputy chief risk officer. In addition, Ed Hughes has been appointed chief technology officer. He also joined EuroCCP from LCH in 2019 to manage the clearinghouse’s expansion into equity derivatives.
Charlotte Crosswell has stepped down from her role as CEO of Innovate Finance after running the industry body for the UK’s fintech sector since 2017. Janine Hirt, Innovate’s chief operating officer, will take over on an interim basis until a successor is appointed. During her time in charge, Crosswell played a pivotal role in the industry body's efforts to accelerate the UK’s role in financial services by directly supporting the next generation of technology-led innovators. This included leading Innovate Finance’s contribution as co-Secretariat to the landmark Kalifa Review of UK Fintech.
Australia’s Treasury has appointed Joseph Longo as the new chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and Sarah Court, a commissioner at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, as deputy chair of ASIC for a five-year period beginning 1 June. Longo previously worked as general counsel for Deutsche Bank in London and Hong Kong for 17 years, was the national director of enforcement at ASIC and a partner at Parker & Parker (now Herbert Smith Freehills). He will replace current chair, James Shipton. Court will fill the role left vacant by deputy chair Daniel Crennan.
Clemens Völkert has been appointed chief risk officer of European Commodity Clearing succeeding Thomas Siegl who has left the company for personal reasons. Völkert has been employed at ECC in the chief risk officer's department since January 2021. Previously, he held senior risk management positions at Eurex Clearing and Deutsche Börse. His appointment is subject to the approval of the Financial Market Authority and various bodies. Until then, ECC CEO Peter Reitz will assume the duties of chief risk officer.
TMX Group has appointed George Kormas as president of the Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation. Kormas is a long-time TMX employee with over 20 years of experience in the post-trade business. He most recently was vice president, chief risk officer for CDCC and the chief risk officer for the Canadian Depository for Securities with responsibility for the two clearinghouses' overall risk profile and risk management operations. He succeeds Jay Rajarathinam, the chief technology and operations officer of TMX, who held the position from February 2019 until February this year.
Christopher Giancarlo, the former chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has joined the board of directors of cryptocurrency lender BlockFi. Giancarlo is well known as an advocate for the development and use of blockchain technologies in financial services and headed the CFTC when the Chicago Board Options Exchange and CME Group first offered Bitcoin futures contracts.
BlockFi has also appointed Joseph Hickey as global head of trading responsible for expanding BlockFi’s institutional trading relationships and risk management processes. Hickey joins from CME Group, where he managed an institutional distribution team responsible for building relationships with senior decision-makers to influence trading behavior across buy-side, sell-side, and intermediaries.
The CFTC has appointed Jason Somensatto, a lawyer in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, as the new acting director of LabCFTC, its financial technology research division. Somensatto takes over from Melissa Netram, who left in early April. Somensatto was previously senior counsel at 0x Labs, the firm behind an Ethereum-based decentralized exchange protocol and the ZRX token.
Casey Khan has joined law firm Sidley Austin as counsel in the global energy and infrastructure practice in Houston. Khan has more than 15 years of experience working directly on commodity and financial trading floors in risk management, legal, and compliance functions. He previously was head of compliance at Vitol.
Capitolis, a trading technology company co-founded by Tom Glocer, the former Thomson Reuters CEO, and Gil Mandelzis, previously CEO of EBS BrokerTec, has appointed James Reilly as head of equity and total return swaps funding solutions. Reilly was previously a senior managing director of State Street Global Markets and the CEO of FX trading platform Currenex. He also previously served as global head of macro sales and trading at Cantor Fitzgerald and head of FX and derivatives prime brokerage at Morgan Stanley.
Coalition Greenwich, a global provider of data, analytics and insights to the financial services industry, has hired Stephen Bruel as a senior analyst on its market structure and technology team. Bruel will head the derivatives and FX practices, with an added focus on market infrastructure. He joins from Brown Brothers Harriman, where he was vice president and head of derivatives product management. Before that, he was a research director in TowerGroup’s securities and investment practice.
R.J. O’Brien & Associates has promoted Christopher Bove to chief compliance officer. He was previously director, compliance after joining the firm in 2019 as associate director, compliance. Previously Bove was lead investigator in CME Group’s market regulation department.
CloudMargin, the cloud-based collateral and margin management services provider, has appointed Helen Nicol as senior vice president, head of product, reporting to CEO Stuart Connolly. Nicol joins CloudMargin after working as global product director at Lombard Risk, which was acquired by Vermeg in 2018. Before joining Lombard Risk in 2006, Nicol held several banking roles at UBS and Credit Suisse in London.
In other moves, CloudMargin has hired Martin Heraghty as sales director for the DACH region in Europe, comprising Germany, Austria and Switzerland and Central Europe. Heraghty was previously sales director at Corvil, a real-time trading analytics provider acquired in 2019 by Pico. Before that, he was sales director, EMEA at Lombard Risk and a sales director at SunGard.
Broadway Technology, a technology company specializing in trading systems and other front-office technology, has promoted Claudia Cantarella to the role of chief legal officer. For the past eight years, Cantarella has led the legal operations for Broadway as general counsel and corporate secretary.
