In other news, BIDS has a new president, ThetaRay embraces Azure, and TP ICAP fills an executive post.
Cowen Division Focuses on Digital Asset Custody
Cowen Inc. has officially launched the Cowen Digital division to provide a platform for trade execution and custody solutions that support digital assets traded by institutional clients, officials say.
The new division, based in Stamford, Conn., offers custody solutions via Cowen’s partnership with PolySign’s Standard Custody & Trust, officials say. The firm has been building the new digital asset custody infrastructure for the past 15 months.
In fact, Cowen Digital has been “trading crypto on behalf of our clients for several months,” which has been supported by its partners Standard Custody and prime brokerage solutions provider Digital Prime Technologies,” says Dan Charney, co-president of Cowen and Co., in a prepared statement. Charney also announced that “effective immediately, Drew Forman has been appointed as the head of Cowen Digital.”
Drew Forman
Forman’s full title is managing director and head, Cowen Digital and Cowen Derivatives, sales and trading. Before joining Cowen, Forman was co-head of sales and trading at Macro Risk Advisors (MRA) “where he helped run the firm’s trading desk,” Cowen officials say.
The Cowen Digital subsidiary will help institutional investors to:
- Access Cowen’s aggregated liquidity through one counterparty;
- Utilize Cowen’s proprietary algorithms for high-touch or low-touch trading;
- Offer streamlined operational and capital efficiencies and post-trade reporting;
- Trade directly from Standard Custody’s cold storage solution;
- Avoid pre-funding requirements and receive flexible net settlement arrangements;
- And access Cowen Research and its policy experts, Washington Research Group
“Future functionality for Cowen Digital will include derivatives and futures, financing solutions as well as institutional DeFi and NFT access,” Cowen officials add.
Cboe Names President of BIDS Trading
Cboe Global Markets, Inc., a provider of exchanges, market infrastructure, and tradable products, reports the appointment of Stephen Berte as president of its BIDS Trading unit. The appointment is effective April 4, 2022.
Berte has almost twenty years of experience in equity trading and is joining the BIDS unit from Tourmaline Partners, where he was a managing director, founding and heading its Boston office, according to Cboe’s statement.
He began his equity-trading career at Standard Life Investments in Boston, where he was head of equity trading for the Americas and Asia Pacific, before becoming global head of equity trading, based in Edinburgh, according to the company’s statement.
“He then went on to become head of investments execution for all asset classes in the Americas for Aberdeen Standard Life, leading a team of investment professionals across equity, fixed income, derivatives, FX and money markets, and was a member of both the investment management committee and the executive management committee,” officials say.
Cboe completed its acquisition of BIDS Trading in December 2020, the company points out, adding that it “maintains BIDS as an independently managed and operated trading venue and broker/dealer, separate from and not integrated with the Cboe U.S. securities exchanges. Mr. Berte will lead BIDS Trading as an independent business within Cboe Global Markets, reporting into an independent committee of the board of directors of Cboe Global Markets.” — L.Ch
ThetaRay Embraces the Microsoft Azure Marketplace
ThetaRay, a cyber-security and big-data analytics company, founded in 2013, with headquarters in Israel, that provides transaction monitoring technology to protect banks and fintechs against financial crimes, reports the availability of its software-as-a-service (SaaS) anti-money laundering processes and procedures in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store that offers applications and services for use on Azure.
Its technology will “enable leading brands easy global access to the solution using Microsoft Cloud, along with streamlined deployment and management, the vendor says in a statement.
The firm’s “packaged anti-money laundering (AML) solution enables payment fintechs and banks to easily launch payment transaction monitoring to secure global payments against money laundering activity hidden within transactions, while satisfying regulators and opening new revenue streams,” according to the statement.
The Azure Marketplace is an online market for buying and selling cloud solutions certified to run on Azure, per the ThetaRay statement. — L.Ch
TP ICAP Names CEO Of Energy & Commodities Americas
Darren Hayes
Interdealer broker TP ICAP Group reports that it has appointed Darren Hayes to be CEO of its energy and commodities business in the Americas. He will be based in Houston, Texas.
Hayes joins after more than six years as managing director of North American energy at TP ICAP, the firm says in a statement. He is an energy-trading veteran, with more than 26 years’ experience, including posts at OTCGH, Nymex, NUON Energy Trade and Wholesale, and Coastal Energy Trading, per the official announcement.
TP ICAP Group plc “operates a portfolio of separate and competing brands to deliver intermediary services, contextual insights and intelligence, trade execution, pre- and post-trade services, and data-led solutions,” the firm adds.
It maintains four business divisions: global broking, energy and commodities, agency execution, and Parameta Solutions, which combines the firm’s data and analytics and post-trade businesses, per its statement. — L.Ch
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