As part of its wider push into the world of financial data services, Fitch Solutions has added ex-BNY Mellon fixed income head Neil Smith to lead the efforts of its Research Services group. Smith, who joins as managing director of the group, will be based in New York and report to Fitch Solutions head Thomas Aubrey, who is based out of London.
In his new role, Smith will be responsible for developing the group’s commercial activities surrounding Fitch Research, which provides subscribers with credit research, analysis, ratings and surveillance information, as well as its suite of analytical tools and research data feeds. The vendor has been gradually adding to its overall data portfolio over the last couple of years and earlier this month added credit default swap (CDS) contract level liquidity measures to its existing entity level liquidity scores, which were first launched back in 2008.
Fitch is also making a concerted effort to crack the US market with key hires, such as Smith’s. Earlier this year, the vendor also poached ex-Credit Market Analysis (CMA) global head of sales Peter Vitale to join as Fitch Solutions’ head of third party distribution and partnerships for the Americas.
At BNY Mellon, Smith ran the bank’s global provision of fixed income products and services for institutional clients in the structured products and project finance sectors for a period of more than three years. Before this, he was managing director and senior investment officer at Citigroup Alternative Investments in New York. He has also been a director at Citigroup Credit Structures in London, where he headed the fixed income investments credit research team; worked in fixed income credit research at Abbey National in London; and has held various government and academic roles in Australia and Asia.
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