(Bloomberg) — One of the founders of high-speed trading pioneer Getco,Daniel Tierney, has resigned from the board of KCG Holdings Inc., the company created when Getco saved a struggling brokerage.
KCG announced Tierneys departure and the appointment of two new board members,Debra Chrapaty and Alex Rampell, in a release on Friday. The changes take effect immediately, the company said.
The resignation comes after Tierney and fellow Getco founder Stephen Schuler decided to sell millions of shares in KCG. Tierneys stake has fallen to about 6 percent of the outstanding shares, while Schulers holding has dropped to about 5 percent, according to company filings. Schuler remains on the board of directors.
Tierney and Schuler founded Chicago-based Getco in 1999. The firm helped pioneer the use of computers to automatically buy and sell stocks, futures and other assets. The companys profit tumbled in 2012. A year later, it bought a struggling Knight Capital Group Inc. The transaction transformed Getco from aproprietary trader buying and selling using only its own money into a broker-dealer with clients.
The Getco founders now invest through Wicklow Capital Inc., a Chicago-based venture capital firm. Its investments include Symbiont, one of several companies competing to adapt bitcoins underlying blockchain technology to overhaul the transfer of assets between buyers and sellers.
The new members of KCGs board come from technology and venture-capital backgrounds. Chrapaty was chairman and chief executive officer of cloud-storage company Nirvanix Inc. Rampell is a general partner at venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
We welcome Debra and Alex to our Board and look forward to benefiting from their strong leadership skills and extensive experience in technology and finance,” said Charles E. Haldeman, Jr., KCGs non-executive chairman, in a statement. Id also like to thank Dan Tierney for his many valuable contributions to KCG during his tenure as director.
