Sales trader Jeff Cooper joins SunGard’s institutional brokerage unit. The 17-year trading and sales veteran will focus on electronic trading, algorithms and buyside clients. Cooper, a former institutional trader and market maker at BLM Investment Securities and market maker at Charles Schwab, comes from Tradeweb, where he was vice president of institutional equities and responsible for sales of electronic institutional equity products. He is also serving a three-year term, which began in August, as a director for the Security Traders Association of New York.
Adam Esposito joins ConvergEx Group’s as a senior vice president on its global transition management team. Esposito, a 15-year veteran, will focus on developing and customizing client portfolio restructurings. Prior to this, he spent the last 13 years at Goldman Sachs, most recently in that firm’s transition management and pension group. He reports to Kal Bassily, managing director and head of global transition management.
Minder Cheng has been appointed to ITG’s board of directors. Cheng served as chief investment officer for index equity and capital markets at BlackRock, which he joined in 2009 as a result of its merger with Barclays Global Investors. During his 10 years at BGI, he was CIO of BGI’s equity and capital markets division worldwide. He oversaw active and indexed equities, transition management, securities lending and cash products, as well as the trading of foreign exchange and futures. During his career, Cheng has held positions in research, strategy and proprietary trading at several firms, including Convergence Asset Management in Connecticut, Sumitomo Finance International in London, Salomon Brothers in Tokyo and the New York Stock Exchange. Cheng is currently consulting with several privately held companies.
WJB Capital has added two senior sales traders: Steve Walley and John Lennon. Walley, a 17-year trading veteran, has spent most of his career on the sellside as either a market maker or a sales trader. After a two-year stint as head trader at hedge fund Tokum Capital, where he specialized in health-care stocks, Walley spent his last two years as a prop trader, managing a market-neutral portfolio of stocks and options. Lennon, a 17-year sales trading veteran, joins WJB Capital’s Denver office to expand business in the Midwest. Lennon joins from Cantor Fitzgerald, where he spent eight years. His other experience includes a three-year stint at M.A. Shapiro and five years at Goldman Sachs, ending in 2001.
RBC Capital Markets added two new hires in electronic trading sales: Anna Ziotis Kurzrok and Michael Healy. Kurzrok, with more than 15 years experience, joins as a director in the electronic trading group. Kurzrok spent almost her entire previous career at ITG, where she was primarily a sales trader covering the Midwest. In 2006, she sold POSIT Alert in North America and Europe. Healy, a 15-year veteran, joins as a director. Healy spent almost three years with Fidelity Capital Markets, where he specialized in selling its suite of electronic trading products. Both report to Brian Suth, managing director and head of U.S. electronic trading sales.
Christopher Cappillo has joined BTIG to start a trading desk for broker-dealer clients. Cappillo was previously with Domestic Securities, where he spent four years. During his 28 years on the Street, Cappillo spent 20 of them at firms associated with Spear Leeds & Kellogg, including Goldman Sachs, which purchased Spear Leeds in 2000.
Terri DeLouisa also joins the desk; she was previously with Domestic Securities, where she spent five years. DeLouisa, also a 28-year veteran, has worked at Knight Securities and Dean Witter.
Bill Van Buren and Brian Guilander join J.A. Glynn & Co. to co-head a new institutional trading effort in equities at the firm’s St. Louis headquarters. Van Buren, a 30-year veteran, came from Stephens, where he ran its Chicago trading desk for four years. Guilander, a 16-year veteran, came from BTIG’s Aspen office, which he ran for two and a half years. The two longtime sales traders, both Bear Stearns alum, will focus on equities and options. Until the two hires, J.A. Glynn & Co. had been strictly a high-net-worth broker-dealer and money manager.
James Leman, a pioneer in the development of FIX protocol while at Salomon Brothers, joins the board of directors at Titan Trading Analytics. A 30-year veteran, Leman is currently a principal and managing director at Westwater, a management and technology consulting firm. Leman spent 23 years at Salomon Brothers and Citigroup, where he headed global electronic trading group and the middle office team. Leman also was the managing director of electronic trading at HSBC, where he managed program and algorithmic trading for the Americas. He also was president of equity technology firm SunGard Brass. Leman was a founding member of the Thomson/DTCC Omgeo Advisory committee, which set the standards for global electronic trade allocations and confirmations.
Transaction Auditing Group, an execution and transaction-cost analysis provider, hired David Shapiro as executive vice president of sales and business development. Shapiro, a 15-year veteran, will focus on execution quality and transaction-cost analysis, as well as development and implementation of trading compliance systems. Prior to joining TAG, he was director of business development at Thomson Reuters Transaction Analytics.
