After six months of searching, Point72 Asset Management has found a new head of U.S. trading in a veteran employee. Dan Lota, the firm’s interim head of U.S. trading for the last six months and a 15-year veteran of the firm, will stay in the role. Lota is taking over the role after former head of U.S. trading Phil Villhauer retired from the firm in October 2017.
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Ray Tierney, iSentium
iSentium, the global leader in extracting value from social sentiment feeds like Twitter and Stocktwits, has hired Financial Services veteran Ray Tierney, as President and COO, reporting to Gautham Sastri, the firm’s CEO. Tierney's resume includes lengthy tenures at Morgan Stanley & Co., Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Bloomberg spanning his 36 years in Capital Markets. Tierney has long been at the forefront in the emerging world of fintech and also sits on several Boards, including The Ronald McDonald House as well as National Organization of Investment Professionals (NOIP). He has also been a contributor to Traders Magazine.
Virtu Financial hired Pete Candler to help develop and grow its execution services business. Candler is a seasoned professional with 20 years of trading and market structure expertise, leading both high touch and low touch execution desks servicing international clients trading into the US markets from abroad. Candler is one of approximately 30 new hires Virtu has made since the acquisition as it focuses on growing its client franchise. He joins Virtu from Evercore ISI where he was a Managing Director. Prior to Evercore ISI, Candler was at Deutsche Bank and at Credit Suisse.
Joe Noviello, the former head of NASDAQ eSpeed, has been hired by Tradeweb, according to his LinkedIn profile. Noviello’s title will be Managing Director of Dealerweb Technologies. He previously was at LJM Advisors, a firm he founded In January 2017. Noviello will report to Tradeweb’s Chief Technology Officer, Jay Spencer.
PanAgora Asset Management, a quantitative investment firm, announced that Jason Gaunt has been appointed head of trading and implementation. He will be responsible for the Firm's global trading activities across equities, multi-asset and alternative investment strategies. Gaunt is a veteran trader with more than 15 years of experience spanning both the buy and sell side. The last five years of his career have been spent with PanAgora as a senior trader on the equity investments team. In 2013 Gaunt was a senior sales trader at Susquehanna Financial Group. He also held trading positions at MFS, Jefferies, Riversource/American Express and LightKeeper Investments.
Jason Gaunt , PanAgora AM
Coinbase has hired Hunter Merghart, a former director of equity trading at Barclays, according to LinkedIn. The exchange has been seeking talent to build out its products and services aimed at traditional Wall Street firms. The company is looking to roll-out new order types and improve the market structure of its institutional-grade exchange, GDAX.
Sean Buckley joined Robert W Baird as a Director, Electronic Trading Sales Specialist. Buckly, a pro with 24 years experience in equities, came from Clearpool where he spent the last 2+ years, most recently as Managing Director, Execution Services. Before that, he was Senior Vice president at Convergex for almost six years. He started his career on the Agency order desk at Prudential Securities in 1994.
KeyBanc Capital Markets bulked up its Fixed Income Group hiring Matthew O’Grady who onboards as a managing director with the Municipal Underwriting Team and will be on Key’s trading desk in NYC. O’Grady is a 20-year industry veteran who will be involved with high-yield trading and underwriting for the senior living and healthcare markets, serving as the primary contact for Key’s public finance bankers in the healthcare space. Most recently, he was a managing director at Piper Jaffray. Previously, he was responsible for the creation and sale of bonds for senior living and healthcare entities at Red Capital and H. J. Sims & Co.
Susan Gilbertson, Mizuho
Mizuho Americas has named as Director of US Equity Research for Mizuho Securities USA. In this role, she will be responsible for driving the quality of the research product and managing the continued growth of the firm’s coverage universe. She will report to Matthew DeSalvo, Head of Equities. Gilbertson has more than 20 years of management experience in equity research. She most recently served as deputy global head of equity research at Jefferies.
PJ SOLOMON, an investment banking advisory firm, landed both Brendan Matthews and Dante Caravaggio for the firm’s Energy Advisory Group. Located in Houston, Texas, both will provide strategic advisory services to clients across the energy chain. Matthews, who will serve as a Director, comes from Citigroup Global Markets, where he most recently was a Senior Vice President. His primary role and responsibilities include the coordination of the firm’s business development objectives and strategic marketing initiatives covering its energy clients.
Caravaggio joins from ConocoPhillips, where he worked as reservoir engineer in both exploration and asset planning roles.
The SmartStream Reference Data Utility (RDU) added Eric Bigelsen as Senior Vice President, Sales for the Americas. In his role, Bigelsen will be leading the sales and business development efforts for RDU initiative for banks, broker/dealers, asset managers, hedge funds and trading companies. With over 25 years of experience, he has worked in leading companies in data, analytics, research, ratings, compliance and technology solutions such as Moody’s Investors Service, Fitch Solutions, CUBE Content Governance and Dean Witter Reynolds.
Deutsche Bank lost several key staff across the pond:
Matt Randall, head of UK cash equities sales departed and is set to join Macquarie. Sarah Heywood, a managing director in UK equity sales left. Oliver Saunders, a director in electronic equity sales and head of Deutsche’s Alpha Capture program exited the firm. Michael Duff, a senior figure on Deutsche’s Autobahn electronic trading platform. Neal Naidoo, who headed up electronic execution and analytics for EMEA. Alex Evans, a managing director in equity research and sales who focused on the healthcare market also left. He is joining BNP Paribas’ brokerage Exane.
