High-performance trading technology supplier Rapid Addition has named Mike Powell CEO, reporting to Executive Chairman and FIX guru Kevin Houstoun. Powell is former managing director for the enterprise division of Thomson Reuters, now known as Refinitiv, responsible for the company’s core data feed and platform business under the Elektron brand. Powell has been working as a consultant and advisor since leaving TR in 2017. At Rapid Addition, he will spearhead the company’s initiatives in providing high-performance enterprise solutions for electronic trading using FIX/FAST and FPGA technologies. Says Houston: “We see significant opportunity in helping customers evolve their trading infrastructure as regulation continues to push the industry towards an increasingly electronic and transparent world.”

DataRobot, an enterprise AI firm, has named Rob Hegarty as general manager of financial markets and FinTech with the remit to expand the company’s reach in these sectors. DataRobot helps clients build and deploy machine learning models to increase revenue, improve efficiency and client experience, and reduce risk. Before joining DataRobot, Hegarty was the founder of Hegarty Group, a research, advisory, and consulting firm at the intersection of financial markets, technology, and data. He has also held senior positions at Thomson Reuters, DTCC, TowerGroup, Putnam Investments, Fidelity Investments, and Coopers & Lybrand.

TORA, a cloud-based order and execution management system (OEMS) provider, has appointed Thomas Mullooly as head of US sales. In making this appointment, TORA seeks to expand its US sales channels and ensure the value of its OEMS platform is communicated to the global market. Mullooly reports to TORA managing director Chris Jenkins, and joins the company with over 15 years of trading technology sales experience, most recently at TradingScreen, where he was FX sales director. He has also spent time at BidFX, EBS BrokerTec and FX aggregator FXall, which is now part of Refinitiv.

Smart desktop integrator Glue42 has named Sean Stephens chief revenue officer with a remit to expand global sales efforts and help customers realise measurable value. Stephens reports to chief operating officer James Wooster. Glue42 CEO Leslie Spiro, says: “Our headcount is now in excess of 100 employees, the majority of whom are focused on engineering and development, and we have 15K plus licenses across the globe.”

Financial Machineries, a provider of data lineage, sourcing, digital rights management and commercialisation of contributed market data, has appointed Keiren Harris, Frank Verstraeten and Daniel Muri to its team. They bring industry experience, regional insight, and networks of professional contacts from across APAC and continental Europe to the company, which is accelerating its ambition to become a strategic partner to globally systematic important banks (G-SIBS) creating data. Financial Machineries helps banks control the IP of their data, cut costs of data operations, and transform publishing processes to to drive commercialisation while remaining within regulatory bounds.

ULTUMUS, a provider of data creation, management and distribution services for index and ETF products, has hired industry veteran Femi Orangun. Orangun joins the company from DeltaOne Solutions, part of IHS Markit, and takes on the role of solutions architect with a remit to assist development of the ULTUMUS data platform and production of advanced tooling in conjunction with the recent alliance between ULTUMUS and Velox Financial Technology. ULTUMUS says its appeal is in offering clients new and proven technology that improves data quality, visibility and timeliness.

Refinitiv has appointed William Leahey as head of regulatory compliance for wealth management. In this role, Leahey will lead all regulatory activities for the wealth management business, identifying key regulatory developments, risks and initiatives for customers.

Before joining Refinitiv, Leahey was vice president and assistant general counsel of the operations and technology group at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). Prior to joining SIFMA, Leahey spent five years in the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA’s) market regulation department developing and implementing high yield market surveillance tools and managing FINRA’s coverage of NYSE rules.

Leahey joins a team of compliance and regulatory professionals at Refinitiv and will engage with regulatory bodies, customers, industry groups, key partners and industry leaders to ensure regulators hear the voices of Refinitiv’s customers when making rules and providing regulatory guidance.

Axyon AI, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) for capital markets, has named Frank Abbenhuis as chief commercial officer with responsibility to oversee the company’s expansion from Modena, Italy, to London and drive client development. Axyon AI products can solve problems such as anticipating the market impact of economic events to suggesting future syndicated loans that could interest firms. Abbenhuis brings almost a decade of financial experience to Axyon AI having worked at ING as vice president of business development for wholesale banking advanced analytics, and formerly as a FinTech mentor for Startupbootcamp.

FlexTrade, a provider of cross-asset execution and order management systems (EOMS), has appointed Lak Loi and Vahid Shirani as co-heads of sell-side OMS business development for the EMEA region.

Both Loi and Shirani come to FlexTrade with more than 25 years of combined experience in equities and derivatives trading technology. Since 1997, Loi has worked in London and on Wall Street as an equity trading systems consultant with investment firms such as HSBC, Santander, and Barclays, and technology providers Bloomberg and Fidessa. Shirani joins FlexTrade after more than eight years working with Fidessa in various roles across its equity and derivatives trading platforms.

Ascent RegTech on April 15 announced the hiring of Arbela Takhsh as Chief Operating Officer. Arbela has held various engineering and operational leadership roles at Motorola, Google, Comcast, and most recently as Senior Vice President of Operations Excellence, Quality, and Data Analytics & Business Intelligence at Gogo. The Ascent team has grown rapidly since the company’s inception in 2015, and following a successful $6 million Series A round in 2018. Within the past year, the team has grown to over 35 full-time employees, and clients/relationships now include ING, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Wells Fargo Accelerator and others.