BTON Financial, the independent outsourced dealing desk for asset managers, today announced the appointment of two senior executives to its management team.
Charles Phan, an experienced hedge fund CTO, quant strategist and trader joins BTON Financial as Chief Technology Officer to drive the firm’s technology strategy and delivery. Caroline Holmes, a regulatory expert and change management specialist with extensive asset management experience, joins as Head of Business Development to act as a conduit between clients, technology and sales teams to enable swift and informative onboarding for asset managers.
Holmes and Phan join BTON Financial to support the firm’s growth ambitions, drive the adoption of its independent outsourced dealing desk within the asset management community and respond to increasing demand for its offering.
The appointments come at a time when the industry as a whole is operating in uncharted territory and is looking to automate existing workflows and processes, evaluating innovative ways to implement trading strategies effectively, maintain a competitive advantage and deliver returns to end clients.
Prior to joining BTON Financial, Charles Phan, spent over 15 years in the hedge funds asset management industry and financial markets. A technology expert and experienced quant trader, Charles was Chief Technology Officer at Interdax, a crypto exchange, where he deployed an ultra-low latency matching engine supporting both institutional and retail clients. He has held senior technology tenures at hedge funds, with responsibility for full stack development of distributed automated trading systems, and has traded instruments across several asset classes. Charles’ extensive experience means that he is ideally placed to continue to develop and enhance BTON Financial’s technology in response to the current rapidly changing market conditions.
Highly experienced asset management professional, Caroline Holmes brings more than two decades of experience to BTON Financial, having worked with many investment managers such as Columbia Threadneedle, Principal Global Investors, BT Pension Scheme Management, Hermes and BMO GAM as well as being a Senior Programme and Change Management Consultant at PwC. As a MiFID II and Brexit regulatory expert, Caroline has a wealth of expertise in market structure change and its impact on organisational requirements. In her role as Head of Business Development, Caroline will harness her extensive knowledge of asset managers and their protocols to ensure the client experience is as efficient and valuable as possible.
Commenting on the announcement, Charles Phan, Chief Technology Officer, BTON Financial said: “I am excited to join BTON Financial as Chief Technology Officer. I look forward to working with the BTON management team and our clients to deliver on our technology roadmap and ensure we continue to help asset managers drive trading performance through innovation and automation.”
Caroline Holmes, Head of Business Development, BTON Financial, continued: “Throughout my career I have supported a wide variety of teams in dealing with the impact of regulatory, political and industry change on market infrastructure and liquidity. Outsourcing trading activities is a growing trend in the industry and I am delighted to join BTON Financial’s efforts to support asset managers by helping them adapt to ever-changing market conditions and remain competitive.”
Dan Shepherd, CEO & co-Founder, BTON Financial said: “We are delighted to welcome Charles and Caroline to the team. Their experience, expertise and industry knowledge will be invaluable in helping us grow the business and continue to innovate.”
He added: “We have seen increased demand for our outsourced dealing desk services as a result of recent events, their impact on the market and on operating models. The asset management community is evaluating workflow automation and innovative ways to execute their trading strategies, increasingly calling on us to support their efforts to automate, maintain a competitive advantage and deliver returns to their end clients.”
The appointments follow the introduction of BTON Financial’s award winning, proprietary Smart Broker Router, designed to support asset managers in taking advantage of the emerging liquidity and execution opportunities. The Smart Broker Router improves trading performance automatically, by selecting the most appropriate broker with the most appropriate execution algorithm, while at the same time ensuring full regulatory compliance.
