In other news, Franklin Templeton hires from Calpers, Siepe hires from U.S. Bank, and Smarsh acquires.
SEC Approves BSTX’s Launch
Lisa Fall
The SEC has blessed the creation of a regulated, national securities exchange facility, dubbed BSTX, that can settle instruments in one day (T+0) while providing blockchain-based market data reporting, officials say.
The BSTX is a trading facility of BOX Exchange and a joint venture of tZero Group, Inc., and BOX Digital Markets LLC, officials say. It is being touted as “the first fully-automated, price/time priority execution exchange for trading securities that is both regulated by the SEC and leverages private blockchain technologies.”
The SEC approval paves the way for BSTX to offer accelerated settlement such as T+0 or T+1, for transactions via the exchange. “BSTX’s approach is integrated with the accelerated clearance and settlement capabilities supported by NSCC and DTC,” officials add.
For proprietary blockchain data feeds, “BSTX will use a secure, private- permissioned blockchain that it controls to make participant market data available to them and to make general market data available to industry participants,” officials say.
“Utilizing future rule filings, we plan to respond with a series of further innovations that will benefit both the issuer and trading communities,” says Lisa J. Fall, CEO of BSTX, in a prepared statement.
Franklin Templeton Taps Calpers for New Post
Franklin Templeton has hired Anne Simmons who is leaving the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), a pension, investment, and health care fund to work for the asset manager’s first global head of sustainability, officials say
The new role will drive “Franklin Templeton’s overall strategic direction on stewardship, sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment strategy globally,” officials say.
“At Calpers, she served as a member of its Investment Management Committee, which determines asset liability management, capital allocation, risk management and operations across global public equity, fixed income, private equity, private credit, real assets, and infrastructure,” according to a statement from Franklin Templeton.
Simpson has also served as the inaugural chair of climate action 100+ and its Asia Advisory Group, a global investor alliance of $60 trillion which Calpers convened and co-founded, officials say. She also led the Calpers investment office diversity, equity, and inclusion business initiative, and founded 3D (Diverse Director DataSource).
Simpson also served on the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s Investor Advisory Group and the International Financial Reporting Standards Advisory Council, officials say.
“Franklin Templeton has identified climate change as a key strategic priority for the firm and has made commitments to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative (NZAMI),” officials say.
Franklin Resources, Inc. is a global investment management organization with subsidiaries operating as Franklin Templeton and serving clients in more than 165 countries, officials say. It has more than $1.5 trillion in assets under management as of December 31, 2021.
U.S. Bank Vet Joins Siepe for Middle-Office Foray
The Dallas, Texas-based Siepe, a technology, data, and analytics vendor, has industry veteran Michael Oliver as its new director of sales for middle-office services. Oliver, who spent nearly two decades at U.S. Bank, will oversee Siepe’s “expansion into middle-office capabilities.”
Oliver will be responsible for driving business development to “this new sector of Siepe’s product offering, building relationships with investment managers, and driving new business across the leveraged loan community,” officials say.
Oliver will be based in Chicago and will report directly to Ryan Browning who is vice president of sales and marketing, officials say.
At U.S. Bank, Oliver was most recently senior vice president of business development. He managed business development for the bank’s corporate trust, “focusing on broadly syndicated loans (BSLs), collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), middle-market CLOs, credit facilities, business development companies (BDCs), and loan agency and commercial real estate (CRE) transactions,” officials say.
Smarsh Acquires Digital Safe
Smarsh, a vendor that captures and archives electronic communication for compliance purposes, has acquired the Digital Safe product line from Micro Focus, after the effort received regulatory approval.
“Bringing Digital Safe under the Smarsh portfolio will help enhance features like unified search, surveillance, discovery, and analytic insights faster. All of this will enable customers in highly regulated sectors such as financial services and government to derive even more value from the data managed in their compliance archive,” according to a statement from Smarsh.
“While bolstering our team with 400 experts in these areas, this acquisition provides Digital Safe customers with access to that technology innovation,” says Brian Cramer, CEO of Smarsh.
Smarsh’s services are used to combat financial crime and for e-discovery to help organizations meet compliance obligations, officials say.
Smarsh’s global client base includes banks in North America, Europe and Asia, and brokerage firms, insurers, and registered investment advisors, among other kinds of firms, officials say.
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