People: Andreasen quits Danske for new role at Saxo Bank

Jesper Andreasen is set to join Saxo Bank in the new year after nine years as Danske Bank’s head of quantitative research. In his new role, which has the same title, Andreasen will develop risk models for use both in Saxo Bank and for sale to clients – a service not currently on offer.

The new quant team will comprise Andreasen and Hans-Jørgen Terp Flyger, currently head of derivatives and Risk IT at Danske Bank.

Andreasen will be replaced by Ove Scavenius, currently Andreasen’s deputy.

Andreasen has twice won Risk’s quant of the year award. In 2012, he shared it with Brian Huge, Danske Bank’s chief quantitative analyst, for their work on calibrating discrete-time implied volatility.

Between 2005 and 2008, prior to joining Danske Bank, Andreasen was head of fixed-income quantitative research at Bank of America in London. He will remain in Copenhagen and will report to Søren Kyhl, Saxo Bank’s chief operating officer.

Andreasen will be free of obligations to Danske Bank from next July.

Jeffrey Wecker returned to Goldman Sachs in October as a partner and chief data officer, after a spell as chief business architect at Bridgewater Associates.

Reporting to John Madsen, co-head of the technology division, and Ezra Nahum, global head of fixed income, currency and commodity strategies, Wecker will oversee governance and architecture of the bank’s data.

Prior to Bridgewater, he had been chief executive of Lime Brokerage Holdings, Townsend Analytics and Caspian Asset management, the latter of which he was co-founder. He was also global head of electronic trading at Lehman Brothers.

Goldman has also made Michael Blum, previously at KCG Holdings, chief technology officer for electronic trading. He will report to Konstantin Shakhnovich and Raj Mahajan, co-heads of securities systematic solutions, and Umesh Subramanian, co-head of the technology division.

Blum previously oversaw design of KCG Holdings’ trading platform and prior to that was chief executive at Teza Technologies.

In the fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) division, Goldman has also made a series of changes under newly appointed co-chief operating officers Jim Esposito and Justin Gmelich. Esposito was previously co-head of global FICC sales, while Gmelich was global head of credit and mortgages trading.

John Willian becomes sole head of global FICC sales, while Jeff Verschleiser is promoted to head of global flow credit, municipals and mortgages trading.

The bank has also created a new structured finance and lending group in the Americas, led by Ram Sundaram, formerly global head of structured credit trading.

Separately, Nick Baltas joins as head of research and development for the systematic trading strategies group. Baltas moves from UBS, where he spent four years in quantitative research.

BNP Paribas has made several moves this month. Stephane Salas has joined to become head of eurozone and UK inflation trading. He was previously head of eurozone inflation trading at Deutsche Bank, which he joined in 2011, and before that he was global head of inflation trading at Societe Generale.

Matthew Clark has joined as global head of prime brokerage sales. He comes from Citibank, where he was global head of client executives within sales. Clark had previously spent 20 years at Goldman Sachs in physical and synthetic prime brokerage.

BNP Paribas also promoted Jerome Bassot, former global head of delta one trading, to global head of prime trading. London-based Bassot has been with the bank since 2000. Clark and Bassot will report to the bank’s global co-heads of prime solutions and financing and G10 rates, Raphael Mashnaux and Arne Groes, as well as Nicolas Marque, global head of equity derivatives. Bassot will also continue to report to Emmanuel Dray, global head of equity derivatives linear trading.

Having joined Credit Suisse in late October, Michael Heraty will direct the bank’s equity derivative sales in pensions, endowments, foundations and insurance, reporting to head of equity derivative sales, Elaine Sam. Heraty previously held several roles at Bank of America, such as head of structured equity sales for North America and head of cross-asset solutions for pensions, endowments and foundations.

Heraty will remain in New York.

Daniel Maguire will be the new chief executive of clearing house LCH. He replaces Suneel Bakhshi, who stands down with immediate effect.

Maguire’s swift elevation to the top job follows a six-month stint as chief operating officer of LCH. Before that, he was head of LCH’s SwapClear service.

Bakhshi moves into a board role on London Stock Exchange’s international advisory business.

Maguire’s replacement is John Horkan, who adds this role to his existing position as head of North America at LCH. Horkan joined LCH in 2012 from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he worked in regulatory reform and sales roles. He will continue to be based in New York, reporting to London-based Maguire.

Deutsche Bank has nabbed Goldman Sachs’ US credit trading head, Paul Huchro. He joins the German bank as global head of investment-grade credit trading, and head of high-yield credit trading in the US and Europe.

A long-standing Goldman employee, Huchro’s previous roles included head of US flow credit trading, from 2010 to 2016.

Deutsche Bank has also hired Tian Zeng as senior credit index trader. Zeng was previously head of credit derivatives trading at Citadel Securities.

The moves are part of a transatlantic effort by Deutsche Bank to promote its credit business; it has made 40 new hires in the US and Europe over the past 18 months across various high-grade credit sales, trading and research roles.

Hans-Ole Jochumsen will retire as vice-chairman of Nasdaq at the end of this year. Jochumsen joined the firm in 2008, when it merged with OMX, becoming president in 2014. He oversaw the acquisition of Chi-X Canada and International Securities Exchange, as well as the launch of NFX, the US commodities exchange.

Ilya Ustilovsky has left his role as quantitative strategist for customer market-making at KCG Holdings to join Two Sigma Securities as senior vice-president. Ustilovsky had been head of exchange-traded fund quantitative research at KCG since 2014, and between 2009 and 2013 had been co-head of options market making. He will continue to work in New York.

The successor to Svein Andresen as secretary-general of the Financial Stability Board will be Dietrich Domanski, the FSB has announced. Domanski will start his role in January 2018.

Currently deputy head of the monetary and economic department at the Bank for International Settlements, Domanski has worked at the BIS since 2000. He also holds the position of head of economic analysis.

Domanski joined the BIS from Deutsche Bundesbank, where he was a group head within the economics department.

Andresen had held his position since the formation of the FSB in 2009. The G20 group of leading economies created the FSB to replace the Financial Stability Forum, which Andresen also served as secretary-general from 1999.

The FSB is based within the Bank for International Settlements, in Basel, Switzerland and is chaired by the Bank of England’s Mark Carney.

Futures brokerage RJ O’Brien has named Brad Giemza as its new chief risk officer. Giemza joins from MUFG Union Bank, where he was head of IT for investment banking and capital markets.

Giemza replaces Jamal Oulhadj, who will move internally to an as yet unannounced position.

Before his three-year spell at MUFG, Giemza spent seven years at brokerage Newedge Group, latterly as global head of risk IT.

Giemza will report to RJ O’Brien’s chairman and chief executive, Gerald Corcoran, and relocates from southern California to Chicago.

JP Morgan has promoted Leah Mallas to become head of foreign exchange prime brokerage, based in New York.

Previously, Mallas managed a group of client service teams within the overall clearing business.

The move is an attempt by JP Morgan to promote forex prime brokerage within its clearing business, which also covers credit/rates intermediation, over-the-counter and futures clearing. 

Jeb Hensarling, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, the US body of politicians that oversees the country’s finance industry, will step down at the end of 2018, when his term of office expires. He also announced he will not seek re-election to Congress.

Hensarling has headed the committee since the start of 2013. Existing rules prevent him from seeking an extension to his six-year term.

Hensarling drafted the Financial Choice Act, which would repeal much of the Dodd-Frank Act – enacted in 2010 in response to the financial crisis. The act, which has yet to pass through Senate, has attracted criticism from the banking industry for its reversal of bank resolution legislation.

Barclays has appointed Reid Marsh as head of banking for Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific. Marsh was formerly co-head of Barclays Asia-Pacific alongside Jaideep Khanna, who is now the sole head of the region. Marsh will divide his time between London and Hong Kong and report to president of Barclays International, Tim Throsby. 

Marsh will also chair the Europe and Middle East banking operating committee, with members reporting to him as well as their existing global business heads. Head of UK investment banking and corporate broking, Alisdair Gayne, and head of banking coverage for continental Europe, Carlo Calabria, will report directly to Marsh.

Marsh will continue to chair the Asia-Pacific banking operating committee and remain a member of the regional executive committee.

Jenny Knott, head of Nex Optimisation, is to leave the firm after two years in the role. Her successor will be Ken Pigaga.

Knott joined what was then Icap from Standard Bank with a mandate to reshape the company’s post-trade services business after the sale of Icap’s broking arm to rival Tullett Prebon.

Pigaga steps up from his existing role as global chief operating officer of the Nex group. The global COO position now goes to Sam Wren, who adds this new role to her existing duties as chief financial officer of the group.