Fintech
Former Cboe CEO Tilly Joins $2B Fintech Clear Street
(Bloomberg) — Ed Tilly is joining new brokerage provider Clear Street, as the former head of Cboe Global Markets Inc. takes on a new securities leadership role.
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Tilly will start at Clear Street as president on July 22 to help grow the financial technology company’s brokerage business in the U.S. and abroad, reporting to the board of directors. The move is the next step in Tilly’s career after he resigned from derivatives and exchange management in September following an investigation that found he failed to disclose personal relationships with colleagues. He will be based at the company’s New York headquarters.
The hire also adds to Clear Street’s stable of high-profile talent as the clearing and custody provider looks to expand into new asset classes and geographies. Last year, it poached Cantor Fitzgerald CFO Steve Bisgay to serve as its chief financial officer. Last month, it named Goldman Sachs Group Inc. veteran Atul Pawar its chief risk officer.
“Ed brings a wealth of experience in large transactions, product development and global expansion,” CEO Chris Pento said in an interview. “We’ve had incredible growth over the last six years, and we’ve hit our stride and will continue to accelerate.”
During his decade as Cboe CEO, Tilly more than tripled the company’s stock price and increased its market value from about $2 billion to $18 billion. Tilly began his career as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange in the 1980s. As CEO, he oversaw a series of deals that fueled Cboe’s expansion overseas and into the era of electronic trading, offering the Fear Index, VIX, and zero-day options.
“I’m used to working with innovators and problem solvers,” Tilly said.
Co-founded by Pento in 2018, Clear Street has said it wants to replace “legacy infrastructure used in capital markets” with a prime-brokerage platform that saves clients money and improves efficiency. The idea is to replace the Wall Street trading systems of the 1970s and 1980s with a streamlined service that caters to many types of traders and investors across multiple asset classes.
It offers prime brokerage services to institutional and retail investors, including securities financing and lending, clearing and settlement, trade execution, custody, and investment banking and trading. Clients include asset managers, hedge funds, and family offices with assets ranging from $50 million to $50 billion.
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The company, which raised $685 million at a $2.1 billion valuation in December, started in equities and has since expanded into options, fixed income and, most recently, futures markets. Now, it’s looking to expand beyond the U.S., taking its market operations to Europe and Asia.
In September, Clear Street tapped former Morgan Stanley prime brokerage technology chief Jon Daplyn as its chief information officer. Other hires are expected.
“Our ability to attract talent is much easier than when we started,” Pento said.
(Updates with additional assumption in 10th paragraph. Previous version corrected start date and reporting line in 2nd paragraph.)
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