Eagle Investment Systems, a BNY Mellon company, appointed Mal Cullen as its new CEO. He succeeded John Lehner, who will now serve as the firm's chairman. Cullen, a professional with more than 25 years of experience, joined Eagle in 2001 as head of Canadian operations. He most recently served as head of the Americas with responsibility for the operations of Eagle's North American business for sales, marketing, professional services, support and product management. Prior to joining Eagle, Cullen spent 12 years at Financial Models Co.
Wall Street Access hired Mike LaBranche as its new vice president of business development. LaBranche, a 19-year pro, spent the last 3 1/2 years at Cowen Group, where he was a senior managing director and a member of the board of directors. He previously was CEO and chairman of LaBranche & Co. before the company's acquisition by Cowen Group in June 2011. His work affiliations include being a member of the New York Stock Exchange's Board of Executives and the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, as well as a director of the NYSE Foundation. He has also been a director of Lava Trading, director of the Securities Industry Automation Corp. and a board member of the Securities Industry Association. He reports to Sean Kelleher.
Greg Finck joined Morgan Stanley Investment Management as portfolio manager and head of the securitized team for the firm's global fixed-income platform. A 22-year veteran of credit and interest-rate-sensitive mortgage portfolios, Finck's main investment responsibilities will be securitized asset research and portfolio management. He comes from Fortress Investment Group, where he was a managing director and portfolio manager of its mortgage-backed securities portfolios. Prior to Fortress, he ran the residential mortgage trading business at Goldman Sachs. He reports to Michael Kushma, chief investment officer for global fixed income for Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
Goldman Sachs hired Raj Mahajan, the former head of high-frequency trader Allston Trading, as a partner to oversee its dark pool and algorithmic-trading businesses. Mahajan will serve as head of equities electronic execution services, based in New York. He started his career at Goldman Sachs in 1996, working as an analyst in the firm's commodities business. In 2000, he co-founded and became president of Kiodex, a risk platform designed for commodity hedgers and traders. That firm was bought by SunGard Data Systems in 2004, and at SunGard he served as president of global trading. Mahajan was appointed chief executive of Chicago-based Allston Trading in September 2012. At Goldman Sachs, h reports to Adam Korn and Ronnie Morgan.
Tradeworx founder and passionate defender of HFT Manoj Narang has left his firm. Narang, a 17-year trading veteran, was a vocal proponent of the much-maligned practice of speed trading and spent 15 years with the Red Bank, N.J., firm he helped create. At one point, Tradeworx was reported to have a 5 percent market share in U.S. equities. Narang's stalwart views on HFT were reported in Traders, and he often argued that firms like his were simply liquidity providers and acting on their own behalf, not for clients. He started his career at Goldman Sachs in its fixed-income arbitrage group, developing statistical arbitrage strategies for bonds and derivatives.
OTC Markets Group has hired former New York Stock Exchange executive Robert Power as its new corporate client relationship director, a newly created position. Based in New York, Power is charged with growing the firm's OTCQX and OTCQB issuing companies listings. He will also support the enhancement of OTC Markets service and technology offerings to better meet issuers' growth and business objectives.
Power, a 33-year professional, served at the NYSE as vice president and co-head of sales for the global corporate client group, responsible for building relationships with NYSE-listed U.S. companies and listing publicly traded companies. Before that, he served as director of new listings for the Archipelago Exchange (ArcaEx), and was later appointed a vice president of NYSE Arca after ArcaEx merged with the NYSE in 2006.
Prior to the NYSE, he spent nine years at Nasdaq OMX, most recently as a senior vice president of its Market Intelligence Desk, which provided sophisticated, customized real-time analysis of trading, marketing activity and performance data to more than 3,000 listed companies. Earlier in his career, Power served as the managing director of marketing at the American Stock Exchange and as a senior analyst in that company's Trading Analysis Division.
He reports to Jason Paltrowitz, managing director and global head of business development.
