SIX Digital Exchange has appointed Alexandre Kech as head of digital securities to the executive team.
Kech brings over 25 years’ experience at some of the most prominent securities services institutions to the role. He began his career at BNY Mellon before spending nearly 18 years at SWIFT in roles including head of securities and FX markets for APAC.
From there, he co-founded Onchain Custodian (ONC), leading the Singapore and Shanghai-based team that built from scratch a custody and prime brokerage service for crypto and other digital assets.
Most recently, he moved to Switzerland to launch and run Citi Ventures’ blockchain and digital asset team to engage across the European ecosystem on emerging use cases for blockchain technologies and digital currencies.
David Newns, head of SIX Digital Exchange said: “I’m extremely excited to welcome Alexandre to his appointment as Head Digital Securities and part of the SDX Executive Committee. Alex comes with an incredible track record in banking and capital markets, and he will be instrumental in leading SDX’s regulated business as we continue to build the financial markets infrastructure of tomorrow.”
Under the leadership of Newns, SDX has been making significant progress of late. Earlier this month, UBS issued a CHF375 million ($392 million) three-year native digital bond on the DLT-based CSD of SDX, while in October it launched an institutional custody service for crypto assets.
SDX is licensed by Switzerland’s financial market regulator, FINMA, to operate an exchange and a central securities depository (CSD) and offers issuance, listing, trading, settlement, servicing, and custody of digital securities.