People Moves: Baton, SEC, CFTC, Instinet, GAM, Ultumus

Former NEX CEO Pivots To Baton’s C-Suite

Baton Systems, provider of distributed ledger-based post-trade and payments solutions, has appointed Andres Choussy as its president and chief operating officer. He’ll look to expand the company’s client base beyond major financial institutions in the payments space and in new markets, while building scale around Baton’s products.

Some projects Choussy will spearhead are expanding into corporate settlements and payments, streamlining the movement of cash and securities in trade finance, and providing new solutions for custodians to help them better execute payments across multiple counterparties.

He most recently served as president and CEO of NEX Group’s Traiana (now CME). Prior to that, he was at JPMorgan Chase, where he served as head of derivatives clearing for the Americas and global co-head of OTC clearing. Choussy is based in New York.

SEC Cyber Head To Leave Agency

Robert Cohen, the first chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Cyber Unit, will leave the organization in August after 15 years of service.

The division was created in 2017, and Cohen led investigations into violations, involving cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, hacking and cybersecurity disclosures, and procedures at public companies and financial institutions.

Before heading the Cyber Unit, Cohen was co-chief of the Market Abuse Unit, where he was the point man for cases that looked into insider trading schemes, dark pools, and market manipulation. Cohen joined the SEC’s Enforcement Division in 2004.

GAM Announces New CEO, Chairman

Swiss asset manager GAM, which manages more than $139 billion in assets, has named former BlackRock executive Peter Sanderson as chief executive officer (CEO), beginning Sept 1. At the same time, current chairman of the group’s board of directors, Hugh Scott-Barrett, has announced he will step down in October, and board member David Jacob, who is also acting as interim CEO, will take his place.

As CEO, Sanderson will focus on restructuring and “simplifying” the business, and concentrate on the firm’s more profitable business lines in order to put the company on a growth trajectory. At BlackRock, he held several titles in the EMEA region, including head of financial services consulting, co-head of multi-asset investment solutions and chief operating officer (COO) for BlackRock Solutions. Sanderson was part of Merrill Lynch’s strategic investment group prior to its merger with BlackRock in 2006.

Prior to joining GAM, Jacob has been CEO of Rogge Global Partners, vice chairman and chief information officer for Henderson Global Investors, EMEA head of fixed income at UBS Asset Management, and vice president of JP Morgan Asset Management.

Both men are based in London.

CFTC Names Head Of Clearing And Risk

Malcolm “Clark” Hutchison has been appointed director of clearing and risk at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Hutchison will be responsible for the CFTC’s supervision of derivatives clearinghouses and their members, including oversight of clearing processes through risk assessment and surveillance.

He’ll assume his new role after a 34-year career in derivatives trading. Formerly, he has been a managing director at Deutsche Bank Securities, Morgan Stanley and UBS Securities, and an executive director for Goldman Sachs. In addition, he’s served as an advisor to the board of directors of the Futures Industry Association, as a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Risk Committee, and as a member of the board of directors of Nasdaq Futures.

Nomura’s Instinet Hires Head of Quant Trading Strategy

Instinet, the execution services arm of Nomura Group, has hired David Fellah for a newly-created role: head of quantitative trading strategy. He’ll sit within Instinet’s Global Trading Research (GTR) team based in Hong Kong, leading quantitative trading strategy research and execution consultancy across Europe and Asia.

Fellah joins from ITG, where he was head of trading analytics. Prior to that, he spent eight years at JPMorgan, most recently running linear quantitative research for EMEA across cash, electronic trading and FX. Before joining JPMorgan, he headed trading strategy at companies including Liquidnet and Miletus.

In his new role, Fellah will report to Richard Parsons, CEO of Instinet Europe, and David Firmin, global head of GTR.

Ultumus Taps LGIM Exec Hodgetts to Lead Index Ops 

London-based index and exchange-traded fund data provider Ultumus has appointed former Legal & General index exec Daniel Hodgetts to the newly-created role of index operations head, responsible for coordinating the development of new products, working with clients, and monitoring opportunities and key performance indicators.

Hodgetts joined the vendor Monday, July 29, and reports to CEO Bernie Thurston. Between 15 and 20 people on its global index and ETF support team in London, Singapore and India report to Hodgetts.

He joins Ultumus from Legal & General Investment Management, where he spent four years—initially as a consultant—in roles including index data supervisor and index data analyst. Before that, he was a business data analyst at M&G Investments, served as an equities market manager at S&P Dow Jones Indices, and was an index analyst at FTSE. Before that, he was a corporate actions administrator at HSBC Securities, and an account management and onboarding executive at Barclays Wealth and Investment Management.

Thurston says that while his own background is very sell-side focused, Hodgetts’ experience with buy-side and sell-side firms will help the vendor address opportunities with buy-side firms.

“As we’ve grown, we have taken on more ETF providers—so we are now the biggest ETF calculation agent—and expanded our client base, so we realized that we needed an individual to coordinate this…with experience of indexes,” Thurston says.