People Moves: IPC, State Street, Finra and more

Adams to succeed Santella as CEO of IPC

IPC, a trading communication and electronic trading and infrastructure solution provider for global financial markets has announced that as part of a planned leadership transition, Kurt Adams will succeed Bob Santella as CEO. Additionally, Stuart Harvey Jr. has been appointed chairman of IPC’s board of directors, while Michael Chin becomes an IPC board member, effective immediately.

Adams has more than 25 years of leadership experience in the financial and technology industries, most recently serving as CEO of Optum Financial. Before joining Optum in 2019, Adams was group president and CEO of corporate payments for Fleetcor Technologies. He has also held leadership roles at U.S. Bank, Elavon Financial Services, Piper Sandler, and ABN AMRO.

BlueFlame AI appoints Chu as CTO

BlueFlame AI, a generative AI platform for alternative investment managers, announced the appointment of Ed Chu as chief technology officer. Chu will drive the company’s technology strategy, direction, innovation efforts, and oversee the engineering teams.  

Chu joins BlueFlame from Kepos Capital, L.P., a quantitative hedge fund. At Kepos, he was part of the founding team, named partner in 2021, and also served as CTO, overseeing the day-to-day aspects of development and architecture and guiding the fund as it grew to manage over $2 billion in assets under management.

State Street hires head of financing solutions

State Street Corporation has appointed Taryn Siglain as head of financing solutions. Siglain will lead State Street’s agency lending, prime services, and secured (repo) financing businesses, and will be responsible for business strategy and driving growth. Siglain succeeds Gino Timperio, who will retire from State Street at the end of June and will report to Tony Bisegna, head of global markets.

Siglain joined State Street in early 2023 as global head of prime services. Prior to joining State Street, she spent 15 years at Morgan Stanley, most recently as head of Americas secured funding trading and collateral optimization. 

Apex Group appoints Fullerton to operational transformation role

Apex Group, a financial services provider, has appointed Ken Fullerton as its global head of operational transformation. He will lead the operational delivery and improvement team focusing on technology and business process initiatives and improvements. He will also oversee Apex’s global service centers.

Clear Street makes Hendelman CEO of Active trading

Clear Street, a New York-based diversified financial services firm, has appointed Sean Hendelman as chief executive officer of its Active trading division, effective immediately.

ICMA announces new hires for market practice and regulatory policy team

The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) has announced that effective July 1, Andy Hill and Natalie Westerbarkey will co-head the market practice and regulatory policy (MPRP) team. Hill will lead work on market practice while Westerbarkey will lead on public policy and advocacy.
 
Hill is currently senior director and deputy head of MPRP, with primary responsibility for the work on secondary markets, repo and collateral. Prior to joining ICMA in 2014, he was a repo and money market trader for 18 years, 10 years of which he was an executive director at Goldman Sachs.
 
Westerbarkey was most recently with Fidelity, where she headed EU public policy since 2017. Before that, she worked at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Citigroup in broader policy roles. She will officially start with ICMA on June 3.
 
Both Hill and Westerbarkey will be members of ICMA’s executive committee and report directly to the chief executive, Bryan Pascoe.

Finra promotes Solomon to EVP of examinations and membership application program

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) has promoted Michael Solomon to executive vice president of examinations and its membership application program, Solomon has taken on an expanded leadership role since rejoining Finra in 2022 as senior vice president and head of examinations. Solomon continues to report to Greg Ruppert, executive vice president of member supervision.

Before rejoining Finra in 2022, Solomon was the general counsel and chief compliance officer for Rockefeller Financial LLC. Before that, Solomon spent seven years as senior vice president and northeast regional director at Finra, where he had responsibility for the examination and surveillance programs in the region and oversaw a staff of 350 people.

Mitigram names new CEO

Digital trade finance platform Mitigram has announced the appointment of Pedram Tadayon as its chief executive officer.

Tadayonwill be responsible for ensuring the delivery of connectivity product offerings to customers, and expanding Mitigram’s network of partners to accelerate digital transformation within the trade finance industry.

Houlihan Lokey taps Kirkby for managing director role

Investment bank Houlihan Lokey has announced that Scott Kirkby has joined the firm as a managing director in its European financial services and technology team, which operates as part of the global fintech group. Based in London, Kirkby will focus primarily on the banking and lending sector.