People Moves: IBM, BNY Mellon, Capco, Volante Technologies

IBM Appoints Former Trump Advisor Gary D. Cohn As Vice Chairman

IBM has appointed Gary D.Cohn as vice chairman of IBM and member of the IBM executive leadership team.

In this role, he will work with IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and the IBM executive leadership team on a wide range of business initiatives and external engagement, in areas including business development, client services, public advocacy, and client relationship management.

Previously, Cohn served as assistant to President Donald Trump for economic policy and director of the national economic council from January 2017 until April 2018. Before serving in the White House, he was president and chief operating officer at the Goldman Sachs Group from 2006 to 2016 and held a number of other leadership positions in his 26 years with the company.

He is co-chairman of Cohn Robbins Holding Corporation, a special-purpose acquisition company, and serves on the boards of Abyrx, Gro Intelligence, Indago, Nanopay and Starling. He is also the chairman of the board of Pallas Advisors. He also serves on advisory boards for Hoyos Integrity and Spring Labs. He is a member of the Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

BNY Mellon Recruits Neal Chansky and Amos Rogers to its Asset Servicing Business

BNY Mellon has announced two senior hires for its asset servicing business.

The firm hired Neal Chansky as its global head of consultant relations. In the new role, Chansky will partner with consultants to develop and implement asset servicing solutions for our mutual clients.

He was previously at Olmstead Associates, a consulting firm dedicated to helping investment managers plan for, select and implement solutions. Prior to this, Chansky spent over 30 years in multiple roles at State Street, most recently as relationship executive for many of the firm’s largest and most strategic clients.

He will be reporting directly to Christine Gill, head of commercial development for asset servicing at BNY Mellon.  

Amos Rogers has joined BNY Mellon as director of business development and alternatives. He is responsible for business development initiatives across the real estate assets industry, a rapidly growing area of strategic focus for many of the firm’s clients.

Rogers joins BNY Mellon from State Street, where he was a managing director responsible for leading business development efforts for the firm’s real assets fund administration and fund services business. Prior to this, Rogers served as a principal and portfolio manager at The Tuckerman Group, a real estate fund manager in partnership with State Street Global Advisors where he oversaw a $10billion portfolio of REIT investment funds.

Rogers will be reporting to Brian McMahon, global head of credit and debt fund services, BNY Mellon.

Capco Canada Taps Babak Omidi As Partner

Global management and technology consultancy Capco has named Babak Omidi as a new partner within its Canadian business.

Omidi founded Capco’s Canadian Cloud practice and has overseen the growth of that team to over 50 engineers. Omidi, who has been with the firm since June 2017, is head of cloud, security and DevOps.

Volante Technologies Makes Senior Hires

Volante Technologies, a specialist in cloud payments and financial messaging, has announced strategic senior hires across sales, partnerships, and marketing.

Jeff Otten, global head of sales, joins Volante with decades of experience leading sales teams in payments, lending, corporate banking, and financial messaging. Otten joins Volante from Finastra, where he held the role of managing director. He previously led teams across fast-growth cloud start-ups and financial services firms including Thomson Reuters/Refinitiv and Morgan Stanley.

Randy Rodriguez joins Volante as regional sales head, North America. Rodriguez most recently led cloud go-to-market and revenue strategies for Bluewolf, an IBM company.

Jim Chow, VP of partnerships, will expand Volante’s partner ecosystem. He spent the last decade growing Google’s cloud business through strategic partnerships. He previously worked at Oracle and Accenture.

Rachel Hunt, VP of growth marketing, will be responsible for Volante’s global go-to-market growth through the development of compelling customer-centric value propositions. Hunt’s background includes leading real-time payments marketing for ACI, heading IDC’s EMEA financial services practice, and managing global marketing for Temenos.