Our FinTech update also includes news from Citi, Computershare, Xceptor, Axioma and Calypso Technology.
Tarbert is sworn in by Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg.
Tarbert is 14th CFTC Chairman
Dr. Heath P. Tarbert, the CFTC’s new chairman, is vowing to “hit the ground running” as his term kicked off July 15, and marks the end of J. Christopher Giancarlo’s service as head of the regulator for the commodities and derivatives trading industry.
“At its core, the CFTC is a guardian of the American free-enterprise system,” Tarbert says in a statement. “Opportunities and threats await us, and we will be ready. Whether it be unfinished business or the unwritten future, now is the time to act, and I intend to hit the ground running.”
President Trump nominated Tarbert to be 14th CFTC chairman for a term expiring on April 13, 2024, officials say. The Senate Agriculture Committee unanimously approved him before he was confirmed as chairman by the whole U.S. Senate in a vote of 84-to-9.
Tarbert moves over to the CFTC from the U.S. Department of the Treasury where most recently he served as assistant secretary for international markets and subsequently as acting undersecretary for international affairs, officials say.
In those roles at Treasury, Tarbert served as the G-7/G20 deputy finance minister, a member of the Financial Stability Board, and the co-chair of the U.S.-European Union Financial Regulatory Forum and the U.S.-U.K. Financial Regulatory Working Group, officials say
Before his time at Treasury, Tarbert headed the bank regulatory practice of Allen & Overy LLP, a global law firm, officials say. At the start of his career, he served as special counsel to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and as associate counsel to the President of the United States for financial markets.
Aside from his public and private sector roles, Tarbert has served as legal adviser to the Systemic Risk Council, senior fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on International Financial Systems, deputy director of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, and as a member of the board of advisors for the Review of Securities and Commodities Regulation, according to officials.
Tarbert is also a licensed CPA and CFA charter holder, and an elected member of the American Law Institute, officials add.
Citi & Computershare Go Digital for Proxy Voting
Citi reports that it has deployed Proxymity, a digital proxy voting platform developed through Citi’s D10X program, in collaboration with Computershare, a provider of share registration and meeting services to institutional investors and public companies.
Proxymity has been used by investors at 17 shareholder meetings in the U.K., and the platform is on track to support up to 200 meetings in the U.K. throughout 2018, the firms say in a statement.
Proxymity was developed originally by employees of Citi’s custody and fund services business, according to a 2018 Citigroup statement, which also noted that the “underlying Proxymity technology was developed at the Citi Innovation Lab in Tel Aviv.”
Through Computershare’s collaboration with Citi, “issuers and institutional investors will now in practice both benefit from investors having more time to digest, communicate and convey voting intentions on important matters that are decided at shareholder meetings,” Paul Conn, Computershare’s president of global capital market, says in a prepared statement.
Xceptor Appoints New COO
Xceptor, which characterizes itself as a “data ingestion and transformation software provider,” reports the appointment of Tom Edwards as chief operating officer (COO).
His mandate, Xceptor says in a statement, is to “further support the company’s growth strategy.” Most recently, Edwards was “head of delivery at wealth management and capital markets technology provider GBST,” Xceptor says.
The new COO is a financial services veteran, with more than 30 years’ experience in “project implementation and professional services delivery from a software vendor, consultancy and client perspective across the global financial services industry,” per Xceptor, with previous posts including Aquila Heywood, Watson Wyatt (now Willis Towers Watson) and PA Consulting Group.
Xceptor maintains offices in London, New York, Singapore, Cape Town and Sydney, the firm notes, and it spotlights clients that include HSBC, JPMorgan, Standard Chartered, BNY Mellon and Deutsche Bank.
Axioma Launches ‘Linked Models’ View of Risk
Axioma, a enterprise risk, portfolio construction and regulatory reporting solutions vendor, has launched Linked Models, a new feature of the Risk Model Machine solution that provides a view of risk across regions or sectors, officials say.
The new feature is intended to create “consistency in the risk/return profile as viewed from the front and middle offices,” according to vendor officials.
“Linked Models enable managers to create a custom risk model that captures exposures from all regions or sectors,” says Alessandro Michelini, Axioma’s head of front office solutions, in a prepared statement. The Risk Model Machine system is for building customized risk models, and the Linked Models function extends these capabilities by combining fundamental factor models “into a view that aligns fully” with investment portfolios. “Until now, portfolio managers and risk managers had to choose models offering a very tailored yet narrow scope, or a very broad and predefined view potentially lacking clarity,” Michelini says.
The Linked Models function can be deployed for:
- Single-country models linked to regional models to capture portfolio exposures beyond a single country mandate;
- Single-sector models linked to other sector models to accurately visualize risk analytics in a given sector;
- And customized models linked to Axioma base models to allow for a consistent view of risk across the enterprise.
New Chief Product & Engineering Officer at Calypso
Richard Bentley
Based in London, England, and reporting to Calypso’s CEO Didier Bouillard, Bentley will “oversee product management, engineering and quality assurance,” and will also serve as a member of the executive committee, Calypso says in a statement.
Bentley will, as well, be working with Tej Sidhu, Calypso’s chief technology officer (CTO), Calypso notes, pointing out that, for the last five years, Bentley was chief product officer for Ullink, which is now part of Itiviti.
Bentley’s “passion for aligning our product organization to ensure customers get maximum value from their investment is entirely in line with our focus on customer satisfaction as the number one priority,” Bouillard says in a statement.
Need a Reprint?