A fast-growing Wall Street startup has made a 'game changer' hire

April 30, 2017

A fast-growing Wall Street startup has made a 'game changer' hire

Chris Yoshida Kairos

A fast-growing derivatives exchange has made a big hire.

trueEX, an interest-rate swap execution platform, has hired former Deutsche Bank executive Chris Yoshida to run sales, marketing, and strategy. He will join the executive team of CEO Sunil Hirani and president and chief operating officer Karen O'Connor.

trueEX is what's called a dealer-to-client swap execution facility. It focuses on execution and processing for interest-rate swaps, which are derivatives that swap a fixed rate for a floating rate, or swap two floating rates.

The firm has 24 global dealers providing liquidity, with 80 investor clients. It is adding dealers in the US, Europe, Canada, Scandinavia, and Australia, according to the firm, along with additional dealers. It's also planning to add other derivatives to the platform in the near future, according to a statement.

"Chris is a game changer, not only for trueEX but for the industry," Hirani said. "As market structure pivots to smarter, cross-product solutions, he will help us quickly realize our vision for 'one-stop shopping' across derivatives, government debt, swaptions, and other correlated products."

The firm witnessed a huge spike in activity on its platform in March. According to the Futures Industry Association SEF tracker, trueEX saw $3.3 trillion in notional volume in March, ahead of the incumbent dealer-to-client SEFs Bloomberg and Tradeweb. According to Clarus Financial Technology, this was mostly activity in US dollar overnight indexed swaps around the March FOMC meeting. In February, in contrast, activity was much more muted.

Yoshida is a former global head of rates sales at Deutsche Bank, leaving the bank in early 2016. He had joined the German bank in May 2014 from Morgan Stanley, where he had been head of interest-rate distribution in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

He is also senior adviser at the Kairos Society, which recently hosted an elite meeting for young Silicon Valley types at the Rockefeller Estate.

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