Global Custodian has announced its inaugural North America Industry Person of the Year award shortlist, naming four individuals from the securities services industry who have gone above and beyond in 2017.
The honour will be handed out at Global Custodian’s annual North America Industry Leaders event, being held on 30 November at The Lighthouse Pier 61 in New York City.
The winner will be decided by a live vote on the day of the Industry Leaders awards event. You will be able to vote from 09.00am on the day.
Click the links below to find out who is in the running.
Claudine Gallagher,head of Americas, BNP Paribas Securities Services
Claudine Gallagher has been at the forefront of BNP Paribas’ ambitious venture into the US market for five years. Building on progress during that time, 2017 saw more milestones than ever before for Gallagher and the team.
Gallagher started off the year with a promotion to Head of Americas in February, expanding her remit to Latin America. Following her success in the US, she was tasked with driving growth across the entire Americas region, including the execution of global segment and product strategies.
“Throughout the past five years, Claudine has been instrumental in building our US capabilities,” said José Placido, Global Head of Client Development at BNP Paribas Securities Services, at the time.
Under Gallagher’s leadership, BNP Paribas has aimed to provide post-trade services to international banks, brokers and institutional investors seeking access to the US market. The move was ambitious given the dominance of the incumbent global custodians in the US.
Throughout 2017 though, BNP Paribas Securities Services has added a number of European banks to its US broker-to-custody platform.
Finally in November, BNP Paribas Securities Services became the first European custodian to venture into the US mutual fund market, a project 10 years in the making.
The deal saw BNP Paribas assume all responsibility for Janus Henderson’s fund administration and fund accounting, middle-office and custody functions for its US 40' Act funds.
Gallagher’s work in the US has paid off in 2017 for BNP Paribas Securities Services, and in return she was rewarded with an expanded role and also named as one of top 25 industry leaders for ‘The Most Powerful Women in Finance’ by the banker.
Peter Cherecwich, president of corporate & institutional services, Northern Trust
Industry veteran Peter Cherecwich has spent over a decade at Northern Trust, among a 25-year career in securities services.
After a handful of different roles within Northern Trust, this February saw Cherecwich named president of corporate and institutional services.
His inclusion as a nominee for Global Custodian’s Industry Person of the Year award however, is down to far more than his achievements over previous decades.
During 2017, in his role within Northern Trust Cherecwich has been at the forefront of developments in arguably the most crucial part of a custodian bank’s long-term future – its disruptive technology advancements.
At a time where blockchain ideas and proof of concepts are most commonly talked about, Northern Trust announced in February that it had joined up with IBM in a commercial deployment of blockchain technology for the private equity market.
Both parties, along with other stakeholders, combined to build a distributed ledger offering based on the Hyperledger Fabric.
The development was timely and well-need given the lack of innovation in the private equity space, where investors are seeking greater transparency, security and efficiency.
“Current legal and administrative processes that support private equity are time consuming and expensive,” said Cherecwich at the time.
“A lack of transparency and efficient market practices leads to lengthy, duplicative and fragmented investment and administration processes.”
In an industry crying out for technological intervention Cherecwich and Northern Trust took the lead.
In August, Northern Trust also teamed up with an analytics firm to provide investors with a greater understanding of how to enhance returns from corporate actions.
The historical analytics provided by Scorpeo, through its ‘Harmonia’ technology generates reports detailing where investors may have missed out opportunities.
Elsewhere, Cherecwich’s inclusion recognises the string of custody deals Northern Trust has secured over the year.
Rahul Kanwar, executive vice president and head of SS&C GlobeOp, SS&C Technologies
In any conversation you might have about consolidation in the hedge fund administration space, you can expect SS&C Technologies and Rahul Kanwar to pop up.
As head of GlobeOp, SS&C Technologies’ alternative assets business, he has been on the front line, growing its assets under administration exponentially through to a number of M&A deals.
Kanwar’s efforts were rewarded in September this year when he was named as executive vice president for SS&C Technologies, the latest promotion in his 12-year career with the technology vendor.
Joining in 2005 when the company acquired Eisner fund administration, Kanwar he has been instrumental in the growth of this business unit both organically and through acquisitions, with the aim to become the number one fund administrator globally.
The biggest moves for Kanwar’s team over the past couple of years were undeniably the acquisitions of hedge fund administration businesses from Citi and Wells Fargo.
Its ability to utilise its technological prowess has been vital in the growth of the business.
“The thing that makes me excited about being a part of what we are trying to do here is how everything comes back to technology. I think has been consistent and is probably one of the big reasons why SS&C has been successful in this space,” Kanwar said to Global Custodian in September.
It is because of this that SS&C has been able to win a number of key deals that has helped boost revenues for the business.
Going forward, advancing new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning and robotics is high on Kanwar’s agenda. With this will be a new emphasis on data within the fund administration business.
“We are doing all kinds of activities around those with a huge amount of data, in order to understand what needs to happen to process this. Ultimately, what we are working towards is more and more automation. Our clients are very interested in how they interact and which technologies they will have access to,” Kanwar said.
Peter Hughes, founder and CEO, Apex Fund Services
Over a period of 13 years, Peter Hughes has taken his independent fund administrator from the beaches of Bermuda to one of the top global players in the space.
Hughes, CEO and founder of Apex Fund Services, has consistently eyed breaking into the top ten rankings for administrators at a time where industry consolidation has taken over.
Under his leadership, he has grown the company across 26 jurisdictions globally and employs 1000 staff.
For Hughes and Apex, 2017 has turned out to be an incredibly busy year. In May it gained the backing of private equity firm Genstar Capital, while simultaneously acquiring Equinoxe Alternative Investment Services.
Following the announcement of the private equity backing, Hughes told Global Custodian: “We’ll be looking to add meaningfully-sized acquisitions - through transformational acquisitions - over the next three years.”
Then five months later, Hughes made his boldest move yet, with the acquisition of Deutsche Bank’s Alternative Fund Services business, essentially doubling its assets under administration.
The acquisition of Deutsche Bank’s Alternative Fund Services includes its administration services to hedge funds, private equity and real estate funds, along with depositary and fund of funds custody.
Hughes described the deal as “another significant step in the evolution of the Apex Group”.
Outside of its M&A activity, Hughes has made a number of developments in emerging markets such as Brazil and Saudi Arabia, and became one of the first administrators to receive approval to carry out services in Abu Dhabi.