A former IBM veteran and a pioneer in electronic trading are joining Thomson Reuters Markets as the sales and trading division continues to roll out its new Eikon product for traders.
Shanker Ramamurthy is leaving IBM to be the new president for sales and trading as of June 20. Meanwhile, Bill Harts has already taken over as chief strategy officer of the division after leaving venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, where he had been for the past two years.
Once onboard, Ramamurthy replaces Mark Redwood, who left at the end of last year and is now chairman of the regulated betting company Sporting Index. Matthew Burkley, chief financial officer of sales and trading, has been serving as interim head of the division.
As head of sales and trading, Ramamurthy will oversee the delivery of services that support financial professionals on and off the trading floor. He will be based in New York and will report to Devin Wenig, chief executive officer of Thomson Reuters Markets.
Ramamurthy, who has more than 20 years of experience with several major companies, was previously general manager of IBM’s global banking and financial markets business. Before joining IBM in 2002, he served as lead partner for PricewaterhouseCoopers’s financial services strategic consulting practice.
Harts will report to Ramamurthy at Thomson Reuters. Since 2008, he had been an operating partner at Bessemer. Harts has also worked for Bank of America Securities, Nasdaq, Salomon Smith Barney and Goldman Sachs.
Much of Harts’ career has involved evaluating, building and investing in new trading systems, including an automated market making system he built for Shearson Lehman.
"It’s been fascinating to see the growth of electronic trading and how the industry has come to embrace a lot of the techniques that have been developed," Harts said. "As the role of automation increases, the value of relationships between people, especially between the buyside and the sellside, becomes even stronger."
In a press release, Ramamurthy said he looks forward to working with Harts and the rest of the team on what he called an innovative platform business that combines content, transaction and collaboration services.
Last fall, Thomson Reuters launched its new Eikon platform, which will be the focus of the sales and trading group. Eikon is designed as a comprehensive tool for the trading industry. The company anticipates users of its other platforms, including 3000 Xtra, will migrate to the new service in coming years.
"It’s going to form the base of all kinds of new services and tools that we can provide for our customers," Harts said. "There are plans on the drawing board to build significant new features and functions, and that’s what we’ll be concentrating on going forward."
Earlier this month, Thomson Reuters appointed Philip Brittan to head the Eikon desktop and mobile platform. He will now report to Ramamurthy.
The 2,700-employee sales and trading group serves customers in the equities, foreign exchange, fixed income, commodities and energy markets. Last year, the group had $3.5 billion in revenue.
