Scott Harrison joins Liquidnet as global head of product and will be responsible for overseeing and expanding the company’s product offerings. Based in New York, he will report directly to Liquidnet chief executive and founder Seth Merrin. Prior to joining Liquidnet, Harrison was the chief executive of agency brokerage UNX. He also spent more than 13 years working at ITG. There, he held senior management positions in sales and technology, including heading the global expansion of its electronic trading services.
Brian Fagen joins Deutsche Bank as head of North American execution services sales. Fagen is a managing director. He has more than 23 years of experience in the financial markets building sales teams and managing relationships across all global equities products. He was most recently at Barclay Capital, where over the last two and a half years he was head of global equities electronic trading distribution and co-head of Americas liquid market sales. Fagen began his 19-year career at Morgan Stanley in 1987, where he started as a derivatives sales trader in the firm’s San Francisco office and rose through the ranks to become head of derivatives sales. He eventually became head of electronic trading and program trading sales. Fagen reports to reports to Derek Capanna, head of the institutional client group, equity, in the Americas, and Andre Crawford-Brunt, head of equity trading in the Americas.
Keith Gertsen was promoted to head Citi’s unified hedge fund sales effort in North America. Gertsen, a 20-year-plus veteran, now oversees sales for both Prime Services and Securities and Fund Services (SFS). He leads Citi’s efforts to unify its hedge fund sales offering, which includes services in fund administration, accounting, middle office, outsourcing, technology and payroll.
Gertsen oversees sales in the Americas for prime brokerage, Delta One, securities lending, capital introduction and clearing, as well as the SFS sales team. He reports to Patrick Curtin in GTS, Alan Pace in Prime Finance and Jim O’Donnell from an investor-client perspective. Gertsen joined Citi in April 2010 as a senior relationship manager in the firm’s global markets business. He has both buyside and sellside experience, and prior to joining Citi was global head of trading at both Viking Global Investors and AllianceBernstein.
Jeanne Austin joins Cabrera Capital Markets as a vice president and sales trader on the international desk in Boston. Austin, who has more than 20 years’ experience, was previously with Susquehanna Group. At Cabrera she trades the Asian markets. She reports to Larry Peruzzi, who heads international trading.
Boutique investment bank B. Riley & Co. hired three sales traders who will work in the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles. The new senior sales traders are Rick Waks, Joe Bergin and Rob Canavan.
Waks joins B. Riley as its most senior sales trader. He arrives from Heflin & Co., where he was a partner and formerly president and chief executive. Prior to that, he served as executive vice president, partner and head of institutional equities at Imperial Capital. A 25-year veteran, Waks started his career as a sales trader at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York. Bergin, a 25-year veteran of sales, trading, investment banking and capital markets, joins from Jefferies & Co., where he was a senior vice president in the institutional equity sales group. Canavan joins from Fidelity Capital Markets with more than 12 years of trading experience. Prior to that, he worked for the brokerage Benchmark Co.
David Mechner was made sole chief executive officer of Pragma Securities, following the departure of Doug Rivelli. Mechner retains his title of director of technology. He cofounded Pragma in 2002 and led the development of its flagship product, TradeEngine. Before founding Pragma, Mechner developed and implemented short-term trading strategies as director of research at the Pragma Hedge Fund.
David LaValle will assume Brian Hyndman’s former duties in transaction services in the U.S. and will oversee Nasdaq OMX’s ETF business. LaValle, an 11-year veteran, was a managing partner at Kellogg Group, overseeing the firm’s NYSE Amex equity unit. He reports to Eric Noll, executive vice president of transaction services U.S. and U.K.
Charles Garcia joined execution management system provider TradingScreen as new head of global marketing for traditional asset managers. Based in New York, Garcia will lead TradingScreen’s expansion into the global asset management community. With more than 25 years of experience in financial services and sales, Garcia was most recently head of North American sales at Sophis, a provider of portfolio and risk management software. Previously, he was director of business development at BlackRock Solutions and led the order management system product and sales strategy at Tradeweb.
Patrick DeGroat joined Pulse Trading’s BlockCross as vice president of electronic sales and trading in New York. A 15-year veteran, DeGroat joins the block trading system after six years at Liquidnet. There, he held roles in electronic sales and trading. DeGroat reports to Doug Gamble, head of Pulse Trading’s New York trading desk.
George Sohos was appointed head of Knight’s electronic trading group, ETG. Sohos, an 11-year veteran, joined Knight in 2000 and has been a member of the ETG management team since 2005. Most recently, he led the quantitative effort that oversees executing all U.S. and European client order flow. His responsibilities cover all global electronic market making and principal trading across asset classes. Prior to Knight, he was a software engineer at IBM and a senior scientist at Enviro Engineering. Sohos reports to chief executive officer and chairman Thomas Joyce.
JPMorgan expanded its electronic trading desk with four new hires. They are: David Fellah, previously with Liquidnet, as a director in quantitative analytics; Peter Ward, previously with Townsend Analytics, as head of EMEA electronic trading; Brett Fischer, previously with ITG, as head of Americas electronic sales; and Marcus Consolini, previously with Macquarie, as head of Asian electronic sales and trading.
Rounding out the desk’s management team, are: Michael Green, formerly of Merrill Lynch, as head of Asia electronic trading; Daniel Nehren, previously at Deutsche Bank, as global head of ECS quant analytics; Peter Eliades, a former Bear Stearns exec, as executive director, Americas electronic trading; and Daniel Ciment, formerly of Barclays Capital, as head of Americas electronic trading.
Robert Karofsky, the former global co-head of equities at Deutsche Bank, joins AllianceBernstein as global head of equity trading in New York. Karofsky, who spent 14 years at Morgan Stanley, was at Deutsche Bank from 2005 through last spring. He started at Deutsche as global head of program trading and direct markets access and Americas co-head of cash equities. In 2008, he was promoted to global co-head of equities. He took a leave of absence midway through 2010. At Morgan Stanley, he was most recently U.S. head of cash equity trading. Karofsky reports to Patrick Whalen, himself a former sellside veteran at Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.
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