In other personnel shuffles, Fidessa picks a business development manager for EMEA derivatives, Maitland adds four and OpenLink has a new CEO.
Singapore Exchange Reorganizes and Shuffles Personnel
Loh Boon Chye, CEO, SGX
The Singapore Exchange (SGX) reports several recent changes to its personnel and organizational structure, including the consolidation of sales and product units —equities and fixed income, derivatives, and market data and connectivity (MDC) — to “improve operational efficiency,” according to a statement.
The new structure also will consolidate SGX’s international offices (China, Hong Kong, India, Japan and the U.K.) under a single unit — membership and international coverage (MIC). “Dedicated country strategies will be developed to drive greater adoption of SGX’s products and services internationally,” say SGX officials.
In addition, the following personnel changes will become effective at the beginning of the New Year:
- Muthukrishnan Ramaswami (Ramu), SGX president, will take on increased responsibilities overseeing the operations and technology units, MDC and MIC;
- Chew Sutat, currently head of sales and clients, will become head of equities and fixed income, and will report to the exchange’s new CEO, Loh Boon Chye;
- Michael Syn, head of derivatives, will lead the expanded derivatives unit, and will report to the CEO;
- Glenn Seah, currently head of compliance, will become head of legal and compliance, and company secretary, and will report to the CEO;
- Lawrence Wong, currently based in China as head of China business, will relinquish his role as head of listings;
- And chief operations and technology officer Tim Utam, has decided to leave SGX after the transition, according to the statement. However, Utam “has agreed to … see through the implementation of the various SGX Board Committee of Inquiry (BCOI) recommendations.”
The BCOI committee, made up of four SGX board members, was tasked with investigating two SGX market outages last year — on Nov. 5 and Dec. 3 — that unexpectedly affected trading.
The SGX statement on its organizational changes does not directly address the impact of these events.
According to a report in Today, a Singapore newspaper, the Dec. 3 outage “brought trading to a halt for hours, and which then finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in April affected Singapore’s reputation as a financial center.”
SGX had to “cough up about S$20 million [$14.3 million] to address gaps in its service-recovery capabilities,” according to Today, which noted also that Singapore’s Monetary Authority said that “while SGX has met its primary obligation to maintain fair, orderly and transparent markets, it had fallen below service-recovery standards in both cases.”
In a subsequent review of the outages, the board of the SGX reported in June that the Nov. 5 power outage “triggered by a voltage sag in both power lines to the SGX Primary Data Center, was caused by a combination of a faulty component in the emergency backup power supply generator and the inability of downstream switches to cope with this malfunction.” SGS officials add that the cause of the power outage has been addressed, and that the power design “has been independently verified by experts to be robust.”
In addition, SGX officials says that there will be “further improvements beyond the root cause to enhance overall resiliency and incident management. These include enhancing processes and resources to improve business continuity, incident management and the timeliness and effectiveness of crisis communications.”
As for the delayed opening of the securities market on Dec. 3, the cause was “a software defect and unrelated to the 5 November 2014 incident. SGX, assisted by an independent consultant, identified key learning points from the 3 December 2014 incident on business continuity planning, incident recovery and technology resourcing. SGX is similarly committed to implement the measures for improvement.”
SGX, Asia’s second largest listed exchange, was formed in 1999 from the combined assets of the Stock Exchange of Singapore, the Singapore International Monetary Exchange and Securities Clearing and Computer Services, according to a history penned by a senior SGX executive.
“The changes we are taking will create a simpler and flatter structure, making us more efficient and better equipped to take on challenges and opportunities,” CEO Loh Boon Chye says in the SGX statement. In July, Mr. Loh replaced Magnus Bocker who left the CEO post at the end of June, according to SGX officials.
Fidessa Names Biz Development Manager, EMEA, for Derivatives
Fidessa group plc reports the appointment of Paul Dex as business development manager, EMEA, for its derivatives business. Dex will be based in Fidessa’s London office.
Dex is a sales, marketing and product-development derivatives veteran who “spent 10 years at LIFFE [the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange], where he ran the exchange’s global tailor-made education program before moving on to the CONNECT project and subsequently running LIFFE’s European sales operation,” according to Fidessa.
Dex “went on to head the front-office execution business for SEB Futures globally before joining RBS Futures as a Sales Director,” according to Fidessa. “Most recently, he worked as an MD in financial product development at BNY Mellon, having initially joined to head up the business development and client relationship management side of their derivatives clearing business.”
The Dex appointment is a “strategic hire [that] is further demonstration of our commitment to investing in the highest levels of expertise across our derivatives business,” says Justin Llewellyn-Jones, Fidessa’s global head of derivatives, in the statement.
Fidessa’s futures and options trading platform includes connectivity to all the major trading venues, buy-sides and other brokers, as well as comprehensive market data and a trans-continental, 24-hour help desk, the company points out.
Maitland Adds Four to New Business Development & Client Management
Maitland, the advisory and administration firm founded in Luxembourg in 1976, which specializes in in cross-border solutions, has made four appointments to its business development and client management team.
The hires will be posted in Europe, North America, and Latin America, respectively, “to spearhead growth in these regions,” according to a company statement. “The hires come during a period of rapid global growth for the firm, which recently won a major contract with MMI Holdings (Momentum and Metropolitan), making it one of the largest fund administrators in the world in terms of AUA.”
The new hires are:
- Luke Spencer-Wilson, who has joined in London as senior business development manager, tasked to “expand Maitland’s footprint in the European alternative investment fund space.” He is a veteran with “nearly two decades worth of experience in investment management and banking, and joins from HSBC’s London office where he was previously director sales for asset managers and alternatives investment managers;”
- Pedro Hilton S. Olmo, who has joined as client services manager in Latin America and will “work closely with Ben Pershick and Benjamin Reid. He is tasked with servicing and managing Maitland’s expanding book of Latin American clients, who use a global suite of Maitland services.” He is an attorney, who joins from the Turim (multi) family office in Brazil, according to Maitland;
- Bill Henderson, who has joined in New York as senior business development manager, focusing on “growing the firm’s share of the hedge and private equity fund administration market in North America and the Caribbean. Henderson is a financial services veteran, who was previously Merrill Lynch and Salomon Smith Barley. He joins from hedge fund administration firm Butterfield Fulcrum, where he was a managing director, leading global sales efforts,” according to the statement;
- And Charles Romilly, who has joined in London as business development advisor, tasked to “expand private client and institutional services across Europe.” He is a financial services veteran in alternative investments and derivatives, and has co-founded two U.K.-regulated entities, according to Maitland.
Maitland notes that it employs more than 1,000 people across in 12 countries, with offices in the British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Ireland, Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritius, Monaco, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.
OpenLink Appoints John E. O’Malley as CEO
John O’Malley, CEO, OpenLink
Energy, commodity and financial trading systems vendor OpenLink has announced John O’Malley’s appointment as CEO, effective as of Dec. 7, officials say. O’Malley takes over from Mark Greene who announced his intention to retire earlier this year from the Uniondale, N.Y.-based vendor, officials say. Greene will continue to serve on the OpenLink board as an independent director.
O’Malley has “successfully led several technology and private equity backed portfolio companies from start-up to maturity in growth markets,” OpenLink officials say. Most recently, O’Malley was an operating partner for Thoma Bravo after being hired as CEO of Digital Insight, a portfolio company that was acquired by NCR.
Previously, he has held the role of CEO at Panini, a global provider of payment technology; Memento, an enterprise fraud detection software vendor; and Harland Financial Solutions, which “grew from a small subsidiary to one of the leading providers of financial technology in North America in just nine years,” according to OpenLink.
“A programmer by training, Mr. O’Malley has deep experience in technology, software product management and professional services,” according to OpenLink. “Mr. O’Malley has previously led global financial services and technology companies in treasury, capital markets, retail banking, payment processing, global finance and guidance systems in companies such as Fiserv, Hogan Systems, Lockheed Martin and J.H. Harland and Company.”
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