People Moves: ASX, Northern Trust, MSCI, Asifma, and more

Lofthouse to lead ASX

Helen Lofthouse has been appointed managing director and chief executive officer of the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), and her appointment will be effective August 1.

Lofthouse is currently chief executive of ASX’s Markets Group, ASX’s largest business by revenue, responsible for cash and derivatives trading, including equities, interest rates, commodities and energy products, the benchmarks business, and international sales. She joined ASX in September 2015 as a member of the executive leadership team.

Prior to joining ASX, Lofthouse was based in London, where she was a managing director at UBS. Her prior roles also include an executive directorship at JP Morgan.

Dominic Stevens will continue to serve as CEO until the end of July and will continue to advise and assist in the transition until the end of September, when he will retire.

Northern Trust makes leadership changes in front office and global businesses

Northern Trust has appointed John Turney as global head of front-office solutions and Marisa Kurk as head of global foreign exchange.

Turney, who has led global FX since 2018, will head the growing front-office solutions business as it expands to new markets across the globe. He will report to Melanie Pickett, Americas head of asset owners. Turney previously served in variety of roles in foreign exchange for Northern Trust before leading GFX.

Kurk joined Northern Trust as chief operating officer for global FX in 2019 and was named chief strategy officer in 2021. As the new head of the business, she will report to Guy Gibson, global head of capital markets. She was previously chief operating officer of Belvedere Trading and served in leadership roles at Mesirow Financial.

Matlock joins MSCI board of directors

MSCI, a provider of risk tools and services for the global investment community, has elected Robin Matlock, former chief marketing officer of VMware, to serve as an independent director on MSCI’s board of directors. Matlock will serve as a member of the governance and corporate responsibility committee of the board. Her appointment brings the total number of directors to 11.

She was most recently senior vice president and chief marketing officer of VMware, a position she held from 2013 to June 2020. She also served as vice president of corporate marketing at VMware from 2009 to 2013. Prior to VMware, Matlock served as executive vice president and general manager of Imperva, a cybersecurity software company. Before that, she held executive positions at technology companies McAfee, Entercept Security Technologies, and Symantec Corporation.

Asifma confirms former regulator as new CEO

The Asia Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (Asifma), the region’s financial industry group representing over 165 financial firms from the buy and sell side, has confirmed that its new chief executive officer will be Alice Law, former deputy chairman and managing director of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority (MPFA). She will join Asifma in July.

She succeeds Mark Austen, who resigned after 10 years in the CEO role.

In the last 23 years, Law has held top leadership positions in two financial regulatory bodies: MFPA and the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong. She is also currently the co-chair of the Global Future Council on Responsive Financial Systems, part of the World Economic Forum. Prior to her public sector roles, Law was in private legal practice for several years. 

LiquidityBook hires new EMEA business operations lead

LiquidityBook, a provider of cloud-native buy- and sell-side trading solutions, has hired Jonathan Cross as general manager for EMEA. He will be based in the firm’s London office and report directly to chief executive officer Kevin Samuel.

Cross will manage all aspects of LiquidityBook’s EMEA business operations, including the continued development of the firm’s European buy- and sell-side client base. He will play a key role in securing long-term growth opportunities internationally as LiquidityBook carries out its global expansion strategy. He will also oversee daily operations in the EMEA region.

Cross most recently served as head of sales and business development at Messer Financial Software. He also served as chief operating officer at Broadridge Financial Services’ asset management arm, and held the same role at Tradar, now part of SS&C Eze. Early in his career, he worked as a developer at several financial institutions, including Barclays Capital, JP Morgan, Landesbank Berlin, Barings, and Hoskyns Group.

Finbourne appoints Byrne as CTO

Finbourne Technology, a Software-as-a-Service investment data management provider, has appointed Robert Byrne as chief technology officer. The appointment coincides with the provider’s recent expansion into North America and APAC.

In his new role, Byrne will manage a team of developers, to identify viable market opportunities and build requisite functionality using SaaS technology and API-led data tools. As part of the company’s expansion, he will be joined by new domain experts across the UK, North America and APAC, including Martin Shaw, who was recently appointed in the client engagement team, and brings both product management and sales experience from SimCorp and Charles River Development.

Byrne previously held positions at Barclays Capital, Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS Delta.

CLS appoints new chair, directors to board

CLS, a financial market infrastructure provider delivering settlement, processing and data solutions across the global FX ecosystem, has appointed a new chair and five new members to its board of directors.

Gottfried Leibbrandt has been appointed as CLS’s chair, succeeding Ken Harvey, who retired after 10 years as a board member, eight of which he served as chair. Leibbrandt has been a member of the board since 2021. He was most recently chief executive officer of payments company Swift, a role he held from 2012 to 2019. Prior to this, he held several roles within Swift, including head of marketing, head of standards, and director of strategy and business development.

The new directors on the board are Brian Gallagher (JP Morgan Chase), Federica Mazzucato, (UBS Investment Bank), Hari Moorthy (Goldman Sachs), Paolo Muzzarelli (Credit Suisse) and Oliver Stuart (Morgan Stanley). The CLS board now comprises 21 directors in total, eight of whom are designated as outside or independent directors.