UBS has just hired a new global head of equities technology in another senior IT hire
Investment banks employ tens of thousands of people in technology, and the key people leading these divisions are increasingly shifting between organisations. But talent is scarce, and a new senior hire at UBS has just relocated from Hong Kong to London for a major new job.
Rich Crossley, who moved to Hong Kong in 2015 as CIO for J.P. Morgan's APAC operation, has just joined UBS as its new global head of equities technology. This is a return to equities specialisation for Crossley - before joining J.P. Morgan, he was global head of equities technology at Citi.
Equities sales and trading is a key function at UBS. The Swiss bank ranked top for equity trading market share in Europe for the second year running in Greenwich Associates new rankings released last week and also leads the algorithmic trading ranking.
UBS has been active in hiring senior technologists within its investment bank. As well as Crossley, it hired Neil Boston as its new head of investment banking technology and UK regional lead. Boston joined in June after a two-year stint at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML). Despite his broad remit at UBS, Boston has a background in fixed income currencies and commodities, having previously led the technology for this division at BAML. The suggestion is, therefore, that UBS has just filled the two key technology roles for its markets business.
Investment banks have been scrambling to hire senior technology professionals as IT becomes ever more central to the way they operate across both their sales and trading divisions and advisory functions. While they're competing for developers and data science professionals with large technology firms like Google and Facebook, they tend to poach from one another for leadership roles.
One of the most significant moves in recent weeks is the departure of Michael Grimaldi, Deutsche Bank's chief information officer for its corporate and investment bank, who left earlier this month for J.P. Morgan. He will hold multiple roles at the U.S. investment bank including chief information officer for its global markets business, the head of global corporate and investment bank engineering as well as the CIO across J.P. Morgan’s EMEA operations.
But banks have been hiring in senior technologists across the board. Gary Smolyanskiy, who oversaw Goldman Sachs’ cloud infrastructure, has joined as Americas head of technology infrastructure services at Barclays in New York. Nick Doddy, the European managing director of group technology and operation (GTO) strategy and innovation team at Deutsche Bank, also joined Barclays as a managing director within its business architecture division.
At Deutsche, Ashu Joglekar, its head of global credit and flow rates IT, left earlier this month to join Wells Fargo while Shel Xu, who was head of trade management technology at Credit Suisse, joined as a managing director in June.
Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com
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