People: Buehler exits XTX, Barclays banks on rates changes, and more

Latest job changes across the industry

Photo: Geraint Roberts

Hans Buehler has left his position as co-chief executive officer of XTX Markets to focus on an academic career. Buehler, who was Risk.net’s 2022 quant of the year, joined the trading firm as deputy CEO in 2022, becoming co-CEO just a year later.

He is the former head of equities analytics at JP Morgan, where he pioneered a technique called ‘deep hedging’, which uses an algorithm that learns how to price and hedge instruments based on a combination of real-world and simulated data. The approach is markedly different from typical parametric models based on the Black-Scholes formula, widely used to price and hedge derivatives.

Buehler held a variety of quantitative and equity leadership roles at the US bank, after joining in 2008, prior to which he led Deutsche Bank’s global equity derivatives quantitative research team from 2001. He is also a former visiting professor at the Technical University of Munich, where he delivered a programme on machine learning in finance.

XTX was founded in 2015 by former currency trader Alex Gerko, who becomes sole CEO on Buehler’s departure.

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Changes are in train at Barclays, where Ankur Aneja has left his role as head of euro swaps and European government bond trading after 20 years with the bank, as reported by Risk.net. Aneja had headed euro swaps trading at the bank since 2015, reporting to head of European rates trading Hamza Hoummady. He also managed European government bond trading at various points of his tenure with the UK bank, where he had worked since September 2005, having also interned there in 2003 and 2004.

Barclays is expected to cut more than 200 jobs in its investment bank to help boost its market share in target areas such as European rates, securitised products and equity derivatives, as reported by Bloomberg, but Aneja’s departure is understood to be unrelated to those job cuts. Barclays declined to comment on the move.

Samy Ben Aoun

Photo: Christian Fournier

In May the bank hired Crédit Agricole’s global head of non-linear rates trading Samy Ben Aoun to lead rates trading for continental Europe. It also reported a 21% increase in revenues for its fixed income business in the first quarter of this year following “increased volatility and client activity”.

Barclays’ chief operating officer Alistair Currie has also left his role to pursue a board portfolio career. His first position in a non-executive capacity is at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. He joined Barclays from Australia’s ANZ in 2017, having spent 17 years at HSBC.

Currie’s responsibilities at Barclays are being assumed by group co-chief operating officers, Craig Bright and Anne Marie Darling. Bright led Barclays’ digital transformation as chief information officer, following stints at Citi and the National Australia Bank. Darling joined the bank in April, after a 25-year career at Goldman Sachs, during which time she held a variety of senior roles, including head of global multi-asset platform sales and head of global FICC execution services.

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Liquidnet has hired Oliver Deutschmann as head of equity derivatives for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Deutschmann held a similar role at Credit Suisse, where he also was a director for fixed income derivative sales. He also headed exchange-traded derivatives fixed income sales at UBS from 2004–2009.

In his new role, Deutschmann will lead Emea client acquisition for the trading network and assist its liquid derivatives offering in Europe.

Last month, the firm also bolstered its equities team in the Americas with three new hires from Instinet. Mark Turner joined as co-head of equities sales after 32 years at Instinet, Hillary Budds as head of US crossing and David Ramirez as a senior member of the programme trading team. Budds previously held trading roles at State Street and ITG, while Ramirez held senior roles at various financial research firms.

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Yannick Jung

BNP Paribas has created two new roles in corporate and institutional banking. Group chief operating officer Yann Gérardin will serve as executive chairman and Olivier Osty, head of CIB global markets, as CEO. The division will now oversee five business lines along with servicing corporate and institutional clients, with all managers reporting to Osty.

The bank is also creating a new unit to unify its commercial and personal banking operations across the eurozone, merging divisions in France, Italy, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Head of CIB Yannick Jung will lead the unit as group deputy COO, reporting to group COO Thierry Laborde.

The appointments will be in effect from September.

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The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has appointed Kate Tyrell as chief of staff and senior deputy comptroller. Tyrell was previously chief of staff at real estate investor Greystone and has also served as deputy chief of staff at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Earlier, she was special counsel to the chief judge at Columbia’s Superior Court.

Tyrell will co-ordinate policy and operations within the regulator, liaise with the Trump administration, and oversee public affairs.

Comptroller Jonathan Gould praised Tyrell’s management experience “as the OCC reassesses its regulatory and supervisory framework”. In June, Risk.net reported that staff cuts to the OCC’s quant teams could call into question its ability to supervise bank models, which may be part of a broader push for deregulation.

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The Bank Policy Institute has hired Evan Sekeris, former chief model risk officer at Capital One, as part of a trio of new recruits to its research team, which covers key public policy issues in banking. Sekeris and Daniel Grodzicki join as senior economists and Laurie Bristow as research associate.

Evan Sekeris

At Capital One, Sekeris oversaw model risk management in compliance with regulatory expectations. He previously worked at Tokyo-based MUFG and at the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Boston. At BPI, he will help lead capital research, working closely with head of capital advocacy Sarah Flowers.

Grodzicki most recently served as principal economist at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where he oversaw the production and development of the National Mortgage Database. His previous experience includes roles at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Board. Bristow has spent four years at the Reserve Bank of Australia, where he played a key role in the RBA’s recent redesign of its monetary policy implementation system.

Sekeris joined BPI on July 21, and the others will start in September.

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Anne Richards

Anne Richards, former CEO of Fidelity International, is to become chair of NatWest-owned private bank Coutts later this year. She replaces outgoing chair Philip Remnant, who will continue to serve the board in an advisory capacity. Her career includes another CEO stint at M&G Investments and senior roles at Aberdeen Asset Management and JP Morgan. She was also a chair of the Financial Conduct Authority’s practitioner panel from 2013–2019.

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Matt Nagele has been named UK CEO at Connecticut-based hedge fund Fairlight Capital Partners. Nagele has previously held a number of senior roles in global distribution for wealth firms, including as head of UK at Janus Capital Group and a decade leading global distribution at Old Mutual Asset Managers, from 2000.

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Moody’s Ratings has appointed Annabel Schaafsma as global head of financial institutions. Schaafsma was previously global head of structured finance and has held various leadership roles across Emea since joining the company in 2001 from Standard Chartered Bank. Before this, Schaafsma was a ratings analyst for Credit Suisse.

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Sabrina Wilson

Digital asset trading platform GFO-X has hired Sabrina Wilson as chief operating officer, reporting to CEO and co-founder Arnab Sen. Wilson has held a variety of trading leadership roles at Citi and Deutsche Bank, among others. More recently, she was chief operating officer at digital custody provider Copper.co and currently sits on the board of Natwest Markets as chair of its risk committee.

GFO-X launched in May, executing its first trade between IMC and Virtu that was cleared at LCH. It is hoped that Wilson will help the firm expand its offering to institutional markets worldwide.

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Rob Byett

Professional services firm Barnett Waddingham has appointed Rob Byett as chief risk officer, following the retirement of head of governance Zoe Smith. Previously, Byett was risk director at asset manager Hargreaves Lansdown for a decade. He has also previously worked as a senior manager for Deloitte.

In April, Barnett Waddingham was acquired by Howden Employee Benefits, and Byett will now sit on both boards as the integration process begins.

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Stephen Dorrian

Stephen Dorrian, head of European market data at Cboe Global Markets, has joined EuroCTP’s advisory committee. At Cboe, Dorrian also heads Emea business development for the firm’s ‘data vantage’ products, and is an executive committee member for industry group FISD.

Prior to this, Dorrian worked as a data licensing manager for CME Group and London Metal Exchange. EuroCTP is expected to appoint additional committee members as it builds a consolidated tape to generate shares and ETP data for European investors.

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Risk compliance software developer AuditBoard has appointed Raul Villar as CEO. Villar was previously an executive chair of software firm Simpro and also led HR software provider Paycor, before it was sold for $4.1 billion in April.

Additional reporting by Rebekah Tunstead; editing by Louise Marshall