Deutsche Bank's ex-chief digital officer signs up to new London blockchain firm

Ed Budd, the former 20-year Deutsche Bank veteran responsible for some of its most innovative technology projects, has signed up to a blockchain firm that has just launched in London.

Budd, who was previously chief digital officer for the global transaction bank (GTB) at Deutsche, has just joined ConsenSys – which describes itself as a “design studio” for blockchain-based open-source platform, Ethereum – to help launch its new UK office.

ConsenSys has around 450 employees globally, but earlier today announced that it was launching a new European hub in the heart of hipster-land – the ‘Silicon roundabout’ technology hub in London’s Shoreditch. It’s on a massive recruitment drive – having doubled in size over the past year across its offices in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Dubai, Singapore and Brisbane.

It already has 12 employees in London including many who joined from banks. Nelson Pimenta, its lead product designer, joined from J.P. Morgan, project manager Joshua Cassidy came from Credit Suisse, while its chief of staff Jeremy Millar started life as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.

Budd left Deutsche Bank in September, and was replaced by Thomas Neilson, who joined from Tesco Bank. Budd had worked at Deutsche Bank for his entire career, having joined after graduating from Loughborough University with a degree in Management Science in 1998. He worked at Deutsche’s investment bank until 2010, when he moved across to its global transaction bank.

Despite his lofty title at Deutsche, Budd’s role was essentially leading the development of new digital products at the bank and spearheading efforts to embrace some of the most innovative technology. He oversaw the bank’s efforts with distributed ledger technology and its interaction with fintech firms related to the GTB.

Budd is also a farmer, raising cattle on a farm in Hay-on-Wye in Herefordshire. He has a large beard, which he told Financial News was a “farming beard”, rather than an attempt to fit in with technology hipsters. He is, according to Companies House, running his own consultancy called Budd Digital, which he launched in October.

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