FTSE Group (“FTSE”), the award winning global index provider, today announced the appointments of several global senior executives to support its continuing growth and bring further industry experience into the company.
"FTSE continues to grow at a rapid pace, servicing institutional investors and financial intermediaries worldwide" said Mark Makepeace, Chief Executive Officer. "The new appointments deepen the company’s relationships within the industry, increase its management strength and expand its capacity for growth."
The new appointments are:
Guy Warren, Chief Operating Officer: Guy will be responsible for continuing to strengthen FTSE’s IT infrastructure and operational delivery, enabling the company to provide a ‘best of breed’ service of excellence to its clients.
Guy has a strong background in IT and Financial Services which spans 28 years, including software product development, IT services and out-sourcing. Guy joins FTSE from Misys where he was the Executive Vice President & General Manager of the Banking division. Prior to this role, Guy was the Chief Executive Officer of Logica UK, the largest subsidiary of Logica PLC.
Jonathan Horton, Chief Marketing Officer: Jonathan will oversee marketing, sales and business development, building up a wider range of data and content services.
Jonathan has over 25 years of marketing and consulting experience and has led high profile strategic, operational and marketing assignments across a wide range of industry sectors at Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer levels. He first worked with FTSE as a consultant in 1995 and re-joined the business in January 2009, initially as global head of marketing and recently as acting Chief Operating Officer.
Christopher Woods, Governance & Policy: Chris is responsible for FTSE’s work with leading academics worldwide and he chairs FTSE’s Index Governance Board that reviews all index rules and policies and determines the appropriate treatment of complex corporate events. Chris is also responsible for managing FTSE’s external index user advisory committees which approve all rule changes and policy matters.
With over 25 years of financial services experience, Chris has a strong background in investment management. Prior to taking on this role, he was the Chief Investment Officer at Man Global Strategies at Man Group plc. Chris was previously a Senior Managing Director at State Street Global Advisors and for four years was Chief Information Officer of SSgA UK Ltd.
Reza Ghassemieh, Managing Director, Fundamental Research and Analytics: Reza joins FTSE with the mandate to build a new team to construct a comprehensive analytical research framework. This will help to enhance FTSE’s global support of active investment management processes. This new set of tools will also be extended to attribution and risk models as well as portfolio optimisation. The development of FTSE’s research capabilities is a natural extension of the company’s current data services and analytics.
Reza has over 20 years of experience in quantitative research and analytics and joins FTSE from Nomura, the global investment bank, where he was the Managing Director and Head of Quantitative Research. Prior to his career at Nomura, Reza was a quantitative analyst at James Capel & Co.
John White, Managing Director, Content Services:FTSE Group (“FTSE”), the award winning global index provider, today announced the appointments of several global senior executives to support its continuing growth and bring further industry experience into the company. John has joined to build a new team within FTSE that will take on responsibility for data governance, covering everything from content acquisition to outbound distribution of data and data services. He and his newly developed team will leverage current FTSE expertise and industry best practice in the management of FTSE’s content.
John has over 25 years experience in the investment data field. Prior to joining FTSE, John was the Global Head, Market and Vended Data Services at State Street Global Advisors, the world’s 2nd largest investment management organisation. Prior to joining SSgA, John was manager of Columbia Management Company's Data Management Group. Before this role, he managed the Data Integrity Group at Wellington Management Company. John also spent over 11 years on the investment data vendor side in various roles, from directing real time and end of day pricing integrity to product management before working in investment management.