This top HSBC FX salesman has just signed up to a fintech start-up

A senior HSBC FX salesman, who has spent the past 24 years working for large investment banks in the City, has signed up to a fintech start-up pushing for the electronification of FX in emerging markets.

Chris de Sibert, who was a managing director and head of foreign exchange and commodities sales to banks in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at HSBC, has just joined R5FX, a currency trading platform focused on emerging markets FX that started life in Canary Wharf fintech hub Level39.

Sibert is one of just five employees at R5FX in London and joins as global head of business development. The company was founded by John Vollemaere in 2013, and received a “single digit millions” investment from Deutsche Börse in November 2014.

While FX trading has generally been electronified for years in developed countries, Vollemaere told Euromoney in 2015 that “there hasn’t been much attention” paid to emerging markets. R5FX focuses on the real, rand, rupee, rouble and renminbi.

Sibert joined HSBC as a director in June 2009 from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he was a director focused on FX sales into Southern Europe. Before this, he spent five years at RBS as head of Iberian FX sales. At HSBC, he led a team of 12 people, six of whom were based in London.

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