The arrival of Mark Hepsworth at Asset Control signals a shift away from the company’s traditional focus on large enterprise data management solutions and a move towards the provision of more focused use case products such as the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) solution introduced last month and the company’s independent price verification service.
We caught up with Hepsworth on his third day as CEO of Asset Control and after a short break since he departed IDC in February following its takeover by InterContinental Exchange (ICE) late last year. Hepsworth replaces Richard Petti, a former SunGard Data Systems executive who took the helm at Asset Control in October 2013, a couple of months after the company was acquired by Marlin Equity Partners, and left a few months ago.
Hepsworth brings 20 years’ of experience at IDC to Asset Control, most recently as president of EMEA at the data services company and before that as head of the company’s pricing and reference data business based in New York City. He is also no stranger to the private equity ownership model having worked with erstwhile IDC owners Warburg Pincus and Silverlake Partners to transform the company, and continuing to work with private equity firms after leaving IDC.
Considering how he might take Asset Control forward, Hepsworth says: “The company is well respected and established in the data management space, and it has a strong client base. Its core strengths are its product functionality, technology tools and global footprint. With these attributes in place, we can look at how data management requirements are changing and evolve the business.”
Rather than focusing on large-scale, centralised golden copy projects based on the Asset Control platform, Hepsworth plans to nurture smaller, but vital, use case solutions such as the FRTB solution that builds on the company’s AC Risk Data Manager software and focuses on the market data management requirements of the Basel Committee regulation.
He says: “We have the building blocks to provide use case solutions and there is already resonance for these in the market. Part of my job is to decide the next use case solutions we need to develop. They will probably fall into three buckets: regulation, risk and helping clients operate more efficiently and reduce expenses.”
With a clear direction from Marlin Equity Partners to develop Asset Control, day four and beyond will see Hepsworth getting to know the company’s 60-plus customers and working on strategic growth plans.
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