GBST’s CEO of Global Broker Services Sunil Shah has stepped down from his role at the vendor and current chief financial officer, Patrick Salis, has assumed his role in the interim period. Terry Williams, who was chairman of its European operations, has also left the firm. According to a spokesperson from the vendor, the parting of ways was a mutual decision and there are no details regarding where Shah and Williams may next resurface.
Salis joined GBST in October 2007 as CFO, prior to which he was CFO of Virgin Money Australia. According to GBST, he also has extensive experience working in wealth management, equities and derivatives broking, superannuation, mortgages and unsecured lending.
Williams was appointed chairman of GBST’s European operations in December 2008, when the Australian vendor acquired Coexis. Williams worked for Coexis for a period of six, during which he was CEO and, later, executive chairman. Prior to joining Coexis, Williams led ADP Wilco, a subsidiary of global business outsourcing giant Automatic Data Processing. Williams founded Wilco, which was bought by ADP (now Broadridge) in 1996.
Shah was previously CEO of Coexis and also joined the GBST executive team as CEO of Global Broker Services in December 2008. During his time at GBST, Shah was in charge of the Global Broker Services business unit and its flagship Syn~ platform, which processes equities, derivatives, fixed income and managed funds transactions. Reference Data Review last spoke to Shah back in November last year about its recently launched corporate actions processing solution, Syn~CorporateActions. At the time, he indicated that the vendor was keen to pitch the new solution at its traditional equities and fixed income broker clients in the UK and the 44 broker clients of its parent company in Australia.
In February, the vendor announced its first client win of the year for Syn~CorporateActions, which is largely aimed at the broker community, with ITG. It will be interesting to see whether the changeover has any impact on the future direction of the corporate actions offering and the Global Broker Services division as a whole.
