Fund processing and oversight automation specialist Milestone has appointed Marian Azer as Managing Director for Asia Pacific (APAC) based in Sydney, Australia. Reporting to London based CEO Paul Roberts, Marian will have overall responsibility for market engagement, client success and go-to-market strategy across APAC, with particular emphasis on the Australian and New Zealand markets. Previously, Azer held the position of Managing Director at RBC Investor & Treasury Services, with responsibility for the APAC and Global Middle Office Product functions, as well as Chief Operating Officer, Global Client Coverage for Australia. Marian was previously Head of Product, Investor Services in Australia & New Zealand at J.P. Morgan Chase. She has also held senior roles at Mercer and BNP Paribas.

Gresham Technologies plc (Gresham), has appointed Vincent Him as Sales Director, Europe to grow the firm’s global footprint. Previously holding Senior Sales positions at SmartStream and Duco, Him brings almost 25 years’ experience across the post-trade reconciliations industry to the role. He will be responsible for driving growth across Europe, and for growing existing customer partnerships and winning new transformation opportunities among banks, asset managers and capital markets firms across the entire Clareti suite of products and services.

Aligned with Gresham’s global growth plans, this senior hire is the latest move from the firm following its acquisition of Inforalgo, a Gresham Technologies company, in July 2020 to expand its end-to-end regulatory reporting capabilities.

ACA Compliance Group (ACA), a provider of governance, risk, and compliance advisory services and technology solutions, has appointed Ron Weekes as CEO of Mirabella, the firm’s regulatory hosting platform. He replaces Mirabella founder and CEO Joe Vittoria, who will assist in the transition over the coming months. Weekes has been a Partner and the European CEO for ACA Compliance Group since 2010. He established and built out the UK compliance division and more recently oversaw ACA’s local regulatory hosting, cyber, and GIPS compliance performance solutions. This was preceded by a nine-year term as the founder and CEO of a UK compliance consulting firm that specialised in the alternatives fund management and advisory sectors.

ACA Partner Adam Palmer will now assume responsibility for ACA’s UK regulatory division, based in London. Mike Downie has also joined Mirabella, moving from his European Operations Officer role at ACA Compliance Group.

Wolters Kluwer’s Finance, Risk & Regulatory Reporting (FRR) business has hired Benjamin Jing as Vice President  of Sales and Business Development for its operations in China. Jing previously worked for Vanda Group (part of PCCW Solutions), as Assistant Vice President in charge of more than 100 staff in its Financial Services unit. He has also held a number of leadership positions in his career at Oracle, IBM, Infosys, Teradata, also working at local and global banks as well as insurance firms.

“Given his experience in successfully leading organizations, I am delighted that Benjamin is going to lead our business development, and sales at this important time, when the Chinese Regulatory landscape is fast evolving,” said Rainer Fuchsluger, Managing Director of Wolters Kluwer FRR, Asia Pacific.

SteelEye, the holistic compliance technology and data analytics firm, has appointed Rob Friend as Chief Operating Officer, effective immediately. As the company plans for expansion into North America and Asia Pacific, and a Series-B fundraise to support further growth, Friend joins to scale SteelEye’s operations. Prior to joining SteelEye, he spent 12 years at Bloomberg, most recently as Global Head of Enterprise Product Implementation & Quality Assurance and previously as Chief Risk Officer for Bloomberg MTD. He also held earlier roles at Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.

Luminex Trading & Analytics, a buy side-owned trading venue delivering low-cost block executions, has hired Ilisa Gruber as sales and relationship manager. Based in Chicago, Gruber will oversee Luminex’s relationships with top clients among its more than 200 buy-side, institutional investors. She will be responsible for increasing engagement with existing clients as well as managing the firm’s continued growth in the US Midwest and other regions. Previously, Gruber spent 18 years at Liquidnet, where she was initially hired as the firm’s first sales trader and helped grow the business into a global institutional investment network. Earlier in her career, she worked at firms including Thomas Weisel Partners, Schroders & Company and CS First Boston.

Block trading continues to be a key element of the volatility and volume of the COVID era. In June 2020, the latest month for which FINRA data is available, Luminex saw an average natural block trade size of 46,000 shares, placing it among the leaders in FINRA’s 10k block trading category.

Managed services firm Delta Capital has hired Karan Kapoor as its new Head of Regulatory Change and Technology. Kapoor has over a decade of experience in bank regulation-driven business and technology change management, spanning CSDR, Dodd Frank, MIFID II, Basel III and EMIR. Most recently he managed the CSDR initiative at a global investment bank where he led a team to quantify the commercial impact of the CSDR Settlement Discipline regime, whilst supporting the design of target state technology and process solutions to deal with penalties and mandatory buy-ins. His focus will be to help Delta Capita clients benefit from Delta Capita’s digital assets and CSDR project accelerators such as DC-Transform and DC-Modus. These help clients design and implement CSDR solutions more quickly and at lower cost, while improving the robustness and completeness of their chosen CSDR solution.

CubeLogic, a provider of enterprise risk management solutions for the energy, commodities, and financial services industries, has hired David Baker as Group Chief Technology Officer and John Harris as Chief Operations Officer for the Americas region. These are both new roles which have been instated due to growing client demand and rapid business expansion.

Baker joins CubeLogic from BP Trading & Shipping where he managed Enterprise Architecture, Credit and Market Risk. Reporting to CEO Lee Campbell, he will head up CubeLogic’s technology strategy and direction from the London office. Harris, formerly Managing Director at Allegro, Director of the ERTM/CTRM Process Group at PwC and Vice President of Professional Services at SunGard Energy, will be based in Houston, TX.

London-based Etrading Software, an independent provider of technology-led solutions designed for financial institutions and industry initiatives, has announced three new hires in its London office, as well as a new operational layer in Asia. In Europe, the firm has strengthened its outsourced services delivery capability through the appointment of James Haskell as Business Operations Officer, David Lane as Technical Operations Officer and Will Palmer as Chief Information Security Officer. Haskell, who joined the firm in May 2020, has over 20 years’ experience working in financial services and operations in London, New York and Hong-Kong, including 13+ years with Goldman Sachs. Lane also has 20+ years’ experience in both tier one investment banking and derivatives exchange trading environments, including a cloud migration speciality. As the new Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), with over 25 years’ experience in IT within the financial services sector in both London and Asia, Palmer is tasked with building a company-wide security strategy for the firm.

Equity capital marketplace Appital has appointed Greg Bennett and Stephane Carty as non-executive directors, following the recent appointment of Brian Guckian and Philipp Eberle to the firm’s management team. Bennett, previously Head of Capital Markets for EMEA and the Americas for Fidelity International, also brings sell side expertise as former Partner and Managing Director in Equity Capital Markets and Equity Syndicate for Cazenove and JPMorgan Cazenove. Carty founded Fir Post Capital, a global volatility fund, in 2010 and subsequently Blackheath Capital Management. Previously, he was head of European Principal Strategies at Wachovia Securities International.