Forefront Fintech Digest Week in Review: Oct 9 – Oct 13
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Broker News
Justin Lada Leaves Barclays for Susquehanna
The DESK | Dan Barnes
Justin Lada, Barclays’ global head of electronic strategy for credit trading & sales has announced he will be joining proprietary trading firm Susquehanna, as its head of execution strategy or trading & sales. “The next chapter begins in November,” he said, in a statement posted on Linkedin. “I can’t wait to join such an amazing team, firm and culture.” Lada began his role at Barclays Investment Bank in 2018, and he notes that the firm’s trading and sales operations have seen four years of growth in the dealer rankings of Coalition Greenwich, while his work in technology innovation includes the potential for use of large language models (LLMs) to elevate automation and increase productivity.
What Could Finally Turn Around Citigroup?
Wall Street Journal | Telis Demos
Citigroup Chief Executive Jane Fraser has a big plan to slim down the management layers of the sprawling global bank. But that alone is unlikely to be enough to close the stock’s big discount. The third-year chief executive’s no-holds-barred approach to trimming—“It’s going to make some of our people very uncomfortable. I am absolutely fine with that,” she recently told analysts—is the kind of thing investors love to hear. Yet Citigroup’s stock continues to languish.?
Exchange, ATS & Clearing News
The Owner of the NYSE Wants to Expedite Your Mortgage
Wall Street Journal | Alexander Osipvoich
It’s best known as the owner of the New York Stock Exchange. Now, it has taken a commanding role in the multitrillion-dollar market for U.S. home loans. Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE for short, has plowed more than $23 billion into an ambitious, yearslong bet to overhaul the plumbing of the mortgage market.? The Atlanta-based company made a series of acquisitions that it says will allow it to replace antiquated back-office processes and combine a mishmash of technology providers used by lenders and servicers. The machinery that underpins the mortgage market is ripe for disruption, with clunky and slow-moving operations that are overdue for modernization, industry insiders say.
Cboe Shakes Up Top Leadership as Arianne Adams Leaves the Firm
Bloomberg News | Katherine Doherty
Less than a month after Cboe Global Markets Inc. named a new chief executive officer, Arianne Adams left the company and Catherine Clay was named to take on her responsibilities as global head of derivatives. In her new role, Clay will oversee a business that includes futures and options markets in the US and Europe, as well as a suite of globally traded proprietary products, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Cboe promoted Adam Inzirillo to Clay’s old role as global head of data and access solutions. A company representative confirmed Adams’s departure.
OptimX Markets Appoints John Cosenza as Strategic Advisor
Best Execution | Alex Pugh
Cosenza, who has spent 25 years in global markets, joins OptimX from Goldman Sachs, where he was head of Americas electronic trading and global co-head of product, research and development. ?Cosenzo spent seven years at Goldman, and was a board member at IEX Group, Bids Trading, Purestream ATS, and CBOE Equity Advisory Committee during that time. He also spent four-and-a-half years at Cowen Group, leaving the firm as head of electronic trading. Earlier in his career, Cosenza held roles in US equity trading at UBS, Robertson Stephens and Deutsche Bank. Cosenza also launched his own strategic advisory firm, Leap Minds, in September this year.
Vendor News
Citi Agented Syndicated Loans Launch on Versana’s Transformative Digital Data Platform?
Press Release | N/A
Versana today announced that founding investor Citi is now connected to its transformative digital data platform, enabling syndicated loans agented by Citi to be available to Versana’s growing subscriber base in real-time. Citi joins Versana’s other three founding investors – Bank of America, Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan – in centralizing global reference, historical transaction, position and floating-rate contract details for the $7 trillion syndicated loan and private credit markets.?
JP Morgan’s Tokenised Collateral Platform Sees First Live Settlement Through Blackrock and Barclays
The TRADE News | Jonathan Watkins
BlackRock and Barclays have gone live on JP Morgan’s Tokenized Collateral Network (TCN) with the platform facilitating a collateral settlement for an OTC derivative transaction for the first time.?TCN was first revealed in May 2022 following a landmark transaction using tokenised Money Market Fund (MMF) shares as collateral, meeting an industry-wide desire for mobilisation without the transfer of the underlying asset.??The platform is a private blockchain application which sits between a collateral receiver and a provider allowing the tokenised representation of the collateral assets to be transferred using blockchain technology.?
Broadridge and Iress UK Announce OMS for UK Broker-Dealers
Markets Media | Staff
Introducing an innovative new solution to the UK market, global Fintech leader Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., announced a strategic partnership with Iress, a technology company providing software to the financial services industry. The combination of Broadridge’s order management system (OMS) and market-making platform (Tbricks), integrated directly into the Iress Retail Service Provider (RSP) network, enables market maker (liquidity provider) clients to benefit from streamlined order management, increased market connectivity, real time data and analytics, and robust compliance, alongside an increased focus on the end user.
Buy-Side News
Quant Hedge Fund Two Sigma Accuses Employee of Misconduct That Cost Clients Money
Bloomberg News | Hema Parmar
Quant hedge fund Two Sigma Investments said it put a researcher on leave after the employee tampered with the $60 billion firm’s models, which resulted in losses for some clients. “One of our researchers engaged in intentional misconduct by circumventing our modeling practices,” the firm wrote in a letter to investors Friday. Preliminary results from Two Sigma’s review suggest the actions led to “gains to some client portfolios and losses to others.” A representative for the New York-based firm declined to comment.
BNY Mellon Pershing Creates Chief Product Officer Role
Markets Media | Staff
Trends in asset management are consolidation, growth of alternatives and the need for scale and talent according to Sareena Dalla Brookshire, chief product officer at BNY Mellon Pershing. At the end of May this year BNY Mellon Pershing announced the appointment of Dalla Brookshire in the newly created role of chief product officer and member of Pershing’s executive committee. Dalla Brookshire told Markets Media that her role involves leading the end-to-end global development and execution of BNY Mellon Pershing’s product strategy, which includes cash solutions, retirement solutions, lending solutions, financial solutions, client portals, as well as a new client product consulting organisation.
Janus Henderson’s Richard Worrell Departs for LSEG Role to Kickstart New Stage of Growth
The TRADE News | Annabel Smith
Head of EMEA equity trading at Janus Henderson and markets stalwart, Richard Worrell, is set to leave the institution for a sales role at the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), The TRADE can reveal. He will join the exchange group as head of secondary markets sales and business development in January 2024, sources have confirmed. LSEG and Janus Henderson could not be reached for comment. The change marks a move away from the buy-side for Worrell who has an extensive equity trading career.
M&A/ Investment News
Citigroup to Sell China Consumer Wealth Business to HSBC
Reuters | N/A
Citigroup Inc (C.N) said on Monday it had agreed to sell its China consumer wealth portfolio, including clients, assets under management (AUM) and deposits, to Asia-focused HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA.L). The deal covers total deposits and investment AUMs of about $3.6 billion, and is expected to close in the first half of 2024. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. "Today's announcement progresses the wind-down of Citi's consumer banking business in China, which was announced in December 2022," the U.S.-headquartered bank said in a statement.
LMAX Group to Acquire Cürex's FX Business in Institutional Push
The TRADE News | Claudia Preece
LMAX Group is set to acquire FX business Cürex, bringing together their respective distribution scale and technical capabilities in a bid to create a stronger offering for clients. The transaction is expected to close in the next month, subject to customary closing conditions. The partnership is set to include execution venues, precise market data and trade analytics, with Cürex’s bank and buy-side relationships complementing the existing institutional client base of LMAX Group’s FX business.
Deutsche Bank Completes Takeover of UK Broker Numis
Reuters | Amy-Jo Crowley
Deutsche Bank has completed its takeover of Numis, a London-based boutique investment bank, expanding its links with UK corporate clients, the German bank said on Friday. The combined business, Deutsche Numis, will oversee more than 170 corporate broking relationships and provide advisor, corporate broking, and equity capital markets services, the bank said. Alex Ham and Ross Mitchinson become co-CEOs of the enlarged business, the bank confirmed. Fabrizio Campelli, who oversees Deutsche's investment bank, said the deal would expand the bank's reach into Europe's largest investment banking market.
Market Maker GTS Buys Foreign-Exchange Trading Unit From HC Tech
Bloomberg News | Katherine Doherty
Electronic market maker GTS is expanding its presence in foreign exchange through a deal with algorithmic trading firm HC Technologies. GTS acquired HC Tech’s foreign-exchange trading assets this month, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter. As part of the transaction, about 50 HC Tech workers will join GTS, increasing the size of the New York-based firm to almost 400 employees, the people said. The value of the transaction couldn’t immediately be learned.
Regulatory & Legal News
Securities Traders Are Gathering in Washington, Trying to Figure Out What the SEC Is Doing
CNBC | Bob Pisani
Securities traders are gathering in Washington. The big topic: trying to figure out what the Securities and Exchange Commission is doing. You know it’s bad when one of the session topics is entitled, “A Buy Side Guide to Navigating the SEC.”? I’m in Washington for the annual meeting of the Security Traders Association (STA), the national association of professionals involved in the trading end of the financial services industry. These are broker-dealers and others who execute trades for customers, and all the people providing technology around them.?
FDIC Security Woes Make Banks Sweat Over Supervisory Data
Risk.net | Menghan Xiao
An audit report on information security management at one of the top US regulators has risk managers worrying that their confidential examination data may not be properly stored and secured by the agency. “Regulators come in a few times a year, and we must provide them with whatever information they want without the ability to negotiate data protection measures as we can with third-party vendors,” says a senior risk manager at a US bank.?
Europe’s AI Act is Taking Shape. How Will the UK Respond?
WatersTechnology | Theo Normanton & Emma Hilary Gould?
In 2012, artificial intelligence was unable to compete with even the doziest of dogs. That year, Google researchers made a breakthrough by training a neural network of 16,000 processors on unlabeled YouTube stills. In a matter of days, the network taught itself to recognize pictures of cats. The increase in computing power and the expansion of foundational datasets since then have changed AI from an abstract futuristic concept to a commodity.
Crypto?& Digital Asset News
Israeli Crypto Firms Scramble to Deal With War, in Between the Sirens
CoinDesk | Margaux Nijkerk
Ben Samocha, the CEO of CryptoJungle, an Israeli crypto educational resource, was on his way Tuesday to the funeral of one of his students, who had been killed, among 260 other young folks, in an attack by Hamas terrorists at a music festival near the Gaza border on Saturday. He was trying to squeeze in an interview with CoinDesk, but the plan kept getting interrupted by sirens of rocket warnings on the road. Samocha is among Israeli crypto-industry workers who are suddenly scrambling to deal with a crisis of a magnitude they haven’t witnessed in recent memory.
Wintermute Says Losing Star Hires to Banks Isn't Such a Bad Thing
DLNews | Trista Kelley & Adam Morgan McCarthy
Big finance players including BlackRock and Fidelity are ramping up efforts to expand their crypto offerings to a broader swathe of consumers. That means they’re seeking more hires with crypto experience to help them do it. Yoann Turpin, co-founder of digital asset trading firm Wintermute, said he has seen top staff leave for non-crypto firms such as banks and hedge funds. “We’re actually seeing really good talent going back to TradFi,” Turpin said, using a portmanteau of traditional and finance. It’s among the “unforeseen effects” of big institutions entering the crypto space, he said.
Inside SBF’s Trial: The Corruption of Caroline Ellison
The Block | Zack Abrams
Before Caroline Ellison, in her role as Alameda Research CEO, repaid billions of dollars in loans Alameda had taken out from third-party lenders, she checked with the firm’s owner, Sam Bankman-Fried. She checked with Bankman-Fried before speaking to employees. She checked with Bankman-Fried before tweeting. She checked with Bankman-Fried before sending Alameda’s balance sheet to investors — and asked which of her seven drafts he liked best.?Now, all Bankman-Fried can do is watch as his ex-coworker — and ex-girlfriend — testifies against him at his trial on seven counts of fraud.?
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