Ernst & Young is forming a dedicated Marking Infrastructure practice within its Banking and Capital Markets team and has announced three key hires to spearhead this development.
Alex Powell was hired in December as partner to build the group. Martin Watkins was brought in this month from Euroclear to work alongside Powell as a director in London. Watkins was formerly a member of Executive Management and Division Head for Clearing at AtosEuronext in Paris, running all continental European technology for LCH.Clearnet. Bart Dumon has joined Ernst & Young from CapGemini as a director in Belgium.
Omar Ali, head of Banking and Capital Markets in the UK commented: Market Infrastructure is experiencing significant change. There are unprecedented levels of new regulation, consolidation, and globalization, and so there are big implications for both buy and sell side business models. We recognize that clients are looking for advice and execution support from people with specific market infrastructure experience and have hired some key market players to draw our expertise together in a dedicated practice.
Powell said: As a global firm we have done over 580 projects in infrastructure, across audit, tax and advisory. We now need to pull that experience together to give clients the kind of cross-border service they need to tackle the business transformation challenges they are facing.
(JDC)