In other People Moves, Blackline and Speakerbus are making changes in Europe while Custom House Global Fund Services has opened an office in Shanghai.
Symbiont Names New Chairman and President
Caitlin Long, president and chairman, Symbiont
Symbiont, which specializes in smart contracts and distributed ledgers in financial markets, reports the appointment of Caitlin Long, former managing director in global capital markets at Morgan Stanley, as president and chairman of the board of directors.
Long will be responsible for “commercializing” Symbiont’s blockchain technology, which the company says includes its “business strategy and client relationships.”
Long, a Wall Street veteran, has been involved with the Bitcoin cryptocurrency since 2012 and “began evangelizing about the ability of blockchain technology to make financial markets more efficient in January 2014,” Symbiont says, specifying that she was “one of five members of Morgan Stanley’s distributed ledger technology working group.”
Symbiont, founded in 2015, points out that it is the ”technology partner” for the State of Delaware’s blockchain initiative, that it is “partnering with Ipreo to revamp the $4.7 trillion syndicated loan market,” and that in June 2016 it “provided blockchain technology for a large European insurer’s catastrophe swap pilot project.”
Blackline Opens an Office in Germany & Names Regional Head
BlackLine, a provider of financial controls and automation solutions, reports that its new Frankfurt office will serve as a strategic hub for “meeting the needs of companies across the D/A/CH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland).”
Petra Ellmerich, regional vice president, D/A/CH, BlackLine
The new office and the expansion in the D/A/CH region will be led by Petra Ellmerich, a 30-year software industry veteran with sales and management experience at companies such as Infor, Oracle, Cognos and Siemens, Blackline says. Ellmerich’s title is regional vice president D/A/CH at BlackLine, and she has been with the company for eight months, according to her LinkedIn page.
Los Angeles-based BlackLine offers a cloud-based software platform that automates such accounting and finance processes as the “financial close, account reconciliations, intercompany accounting and controls assurance,” the company says, specifying that its D/A/CH customers include “more than 100 companies operating in the D/A/CH region, including locally headquartered companies Kempinski Hotels and Trivago.” BlackLine also serves many firms in financial services.
In a late-breaking move last week, BlackLine announced that it acquired Runbook, a European vendor of financial close and automation solutions to the SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) integrated applications market, officials say.
Speakerbus Moves London Headquarters
Speakerbus, a provider of voice solutions for financial institutions, reports that it has relocated to a new office in London’s City section, as the U.K. capital’s financial center is known.
The new Speakerbus office “boasts an advanced demo facility, which enables the firm to showcase its latest innovations in communication software, alongside their partners’ best-of-breed voice technologies,” the company says in a statement, which also specifies that its “client base spans 50,000+ users in over 60 countries.”
The City in London is generally regarded as the number two financial center in the world, after New York City.
Custom House Global Fund Services Opens Shanghai Office
Custom House Global Fund Services, which specializes in hedge fund administration, reports the opening of its Shanghai office, the second in mainland China for Custom House, following Shenzhen.
The new office is a “result of increased investor appetite to access global financial markets via regional financial centres,” Custom House, which was founded in 1989, says in a statement. The company notes also that the firm has hired Sunny Huang as a relationship manager, “responsible for new business development and the collaboration between clients and the firm.” She will report to Allen Li, director of the Hong Kong office.
Before joining Custom House, Huang was a client advisor assistant at UBS AG in Hong Kong, “where she was responsible for the day-to-day administration of onboarding clients and providing updates on their portfolios,” Custom House notes.
The company tallies “over $20bn in AUA” and “provides fund administration services to more than 200 managers and 500 investment funds. The firm has offices in Chicago, Dublin, Geneva, Guernsey, Hong Kong, London, Malta, New York, Rotterdam, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, Sofia and Sydney.”
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