Financial analytics units of both business information services giant IHS Markit and trading platform operator Liquidnet Holdings said they filled top leadership positions in late January.
IHS Markit recruited longtime markets executive Mark Findlay as global head of its Financial Risk Analytics business, based in London and reporting to Yaacov Mutnikas, chief technology officer and chief data scientist.
Liquidnet appointed Vicky Sanders as global head of investment analytics (IA), a new business unit consisting of three acquired companies, one of which, RSRCHXchange, Sanders co-founded in 2014. She is also in London, reporting to Brian Conroy, a former Fidelity Investments executive who is president of Liquidnet, which has its headquarters in New York.
Markets Experience
IHS Markit's enterprise-wide risk management offerings include two solution suites: CCR/xVA (Counterparty Credit Risk/x-Valuation Adjustment) and FRTB (Fundamental Review of the Trading Book). The former “allows firms to mitigate the impact of capital requirements and delivers flexible pre-trade analytics to the front office”; the latter “can be implemented on a standalone basis to address specific aspects of the requirements or in combination with one another to provide end-to-end support for FRTB,” the company says on its website.
Findlay brings to Financial Risk Analytics more than 25 years' experience in global markets, most recently as a partner of risk management consulting firm TLG in London. He previously held chief operating officer positions in trading and quantitative risk management roles at ABN Amro, UBS and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and was capital management program director of global markets at HSBC.
In a note circulated on January 27, IHS Markit's Mutnikas said that Findlay's “deep risk management experience for asset managers and banks will help us grow the business further. As a former longstanding customer of our risk analytics and data services, he will be well-positioned to oversee our product innovation plans so that we continue to provide our customers with best-in-class risk analytics solutions.”
From 2016 until November last year, the IHS Markit analytics unit was headed by Andrew Aziz, who became executive vice president of business development of wealth management technology company d1g1t. That Toronto-based organization was co-founded by Dan Rosen, formerly of Algorithmics (now part of SS&C Technologies Holdings) and R² Financial Technologies (acquired by S&P Capital IQ in 2012).
From Trading to AI
Liquidnet was founded in 1999 and in 2001 disrupted institutional equities trading with its peer-to-peer network connecting buy-side institutions. It subsequently expanded internationally and into fixed income; its network has grown to more than 1,000 institutional investors that collectively manage $33 trillion in equity and fixed income assets.
The company bolstered its technology portfolio with the acquisitions now overseen by investment analytics head Vicky Sanders: data analytics platform OTAS Technologies, acquired in 2017, followed by RSRCHXhange and Prattle in 2019. They bring together elements of artificial intelligence - machine learning and, in Prattle's case, natural language processing - and RSRCHXhange's investment-research aggregation, which has hundreds of bank and buy-side users.
Sanders joined Liquidnet when it bought RSRCHXchange in May 2019. Before that venture, she was head of analytics sales at Marex Spectron and executive director in Goldman Sachs' equity sales division. She began her career at Merrill Lynch in London, working in global and European equity sales.
“Since joining us last year, Vicky has been instrumental in helping us bring to life our vision for Liquidnet IA,” president Brian Conroy said in the January 30 announcement. “We look forward to all that she will accomplish as we get closer to launching the new Investment Analytics app later this year.”
Said Sanders: “Liquidnet has always been a fintech leader and at the forefront of innovation in capital markets. Liquidnet IA will be dedicated to empowering asset managers with a personalized and customizable research and intelligence platform, leading to enhanced performance.”
In November 2019, Liquidnet promoted Patrick Strobel from head of technology in EMEA to chief technology officer, overseeing overall technology strategy and “tasked with aligning the company's technology offerings following the recent acquisitions of Prattle and RSRCHXchange.”
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