Obituary
Paul Georgy, co-founder of Allendale, a commodity trading and research firm, has passed away at the age of 74. Georgy served on the National Futures Association’s board of directors for 18 years, including serving as board vice chair from 2012-2013. He was a longtime partner of RJ O’Brien and a respected leader in the agricultural futures community.
People News
The European Securities and Markets Authority has announced that its chair, Verena Ross, will step down at the end of her first term on 31 October 2026. Ross took up the role on 1 November 2021. Between 2011 and 2021, she served as ESMA’s first executive director, responsible for building up the organisation and overseeing its day-to-day operations. Before ESMA, Ross held senior positions at the UK’s Financial Services Authority and was a member of its executive committee. Ross joined the FSA in 1998 to run the executive chairman’s office during the regulator’s start-up phase and was briefly a seconded advisor to the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission in 2000.
ESMA has renewed Natasha Cazenave’s mandate as executive director for a second five-year term, until the end of May 2031. Cazenave has been executive director of ESMA since June 2021. Previously, she spent more than a decade at the French Autorité des Marchés Financiers, where she served as managing director and head of the policy and international affairs directorate. She also chaired IOSCO’s policy committee on investment management and later became co-chair of the Financial Stability Board’s expert group on shadow banking.
Eurogroup, the group of finance ministers that helps shape eurozone policy, has elected Kyriakos Pierrakakis, finance minister of Greece, as its president for a two-and-a-half-year term. The announcement follows the resignation of Irish finance minister Paschal Donohue, who stepped down as president of the Eurogroup three months into his renewed term to join the World Bank in Washington.
Marex has named Gary Pettit as global head of rates, starting in January. Pettit has held leadership positions at Sigma Broking, ED&F Man Capital Markets and ICAP, and his hiring comes as Marex looks to move into new markets such as cryptocurrency and prediction contracts.
Andy Ross, global head of prime and financing products at Standard Chartered, has left the bank. In a LinkedIn post, Ross said, “I'll be taking some time to recharge with a healthy bit of skiing before sharing my next plans in the New Year. Watch this space!” Before joining Standard Chartered in 2022 as global head of prime brokerage, Ross was chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group’s interest rate derivatives platform CurveGlobal. He was appointed as a member of LSEG’s capital markets management team in 2020. Ross previously worked at Morgan Stanley for 16 years, beginning as the regional head of credit valuation adjustment trading and ultimately serving as the European head of OTC clearing.
Hedge fund Schonfeld has hired Citadel chief financial officer Andrew Philipp as co-president, effective September 2026. He will share responsibilities with current president Andrew Fishman. Philipp started his career as a trader at Goldman Sachs, where he spent 16 years and advanced to partner, serving as global chief market risk officer and chief risk officer for EMEA. He joined Citadel in 2021.
Trading Technologies has expanded its London sales team with the appointment of Rajiv Shah as head of sales, EMEA. Shah was most recently head of sales, sell-side solutions, EMEA at FlexTrade. Previously, he served as global head of sales for Cosaic, a fintech provider of data visualisation and desktop interoperability enterprise software. Before that, he held several senior leadership roles at Fidessa.
The Bank for International Settlements has appointed Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli as head of its Innovation Hub, a role he will assume in March 2026 for a five-year term, and which includes membership on the Bank for International Settlements executive committee. He will lead the BIS Innovation Hub in its mission to foster international collaboration among central banks on innovative financial technology. Mancini-Griffoli currently serves as assistant director for payments, currencies and infrastructure at the International Monetary Fund, where he has held senior roles since 2011 and chairs the International Monetary Fund’s coordination group on digital money. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Swiss National Bank and held earlier roles at Goldman Sachs, Boston Consulting Group and a Silicon Valley technology startup. He succeeds Cecilia Skingsley, with Bank for International Settlements deputy general manager Andréa M Maechler serving as acting head until his arrival.
Jean-Marie Mamodesen has joined Droit, a regulatory compliance technology provider, as a regional sales director to lead growth across Continental Europe. He joins the firm’s London team from Kaizen, where he served as managing director and head of European sales. He previously held senior roles at Deutsche Börse and Euroclear’s Xtrakter, as well as earlier positions at the International Capital Market Association and the International Securities Market Association.
Kaizen, a provider of regulatory compliance technology, has appointed James Crow as chief technology officer. Crow joined Kaizen in April 2025 as head of engineering from the London Stock Exchange Group, where he was responsible for building and scaling the UnaVista platform and services.
