Brian is Managing Director of BTA Consulting Limited - a niche and leading financial markets consultancy group, which Brian set up in 1991.
BTA Consulting has provided advice to some 100 clients across the globe on projects of national importance associated with the development of capital markets. This includes mature and emerging markets exchanges, MTFs, regulators, CSDs, investment banks, data centres and IT providers. The client experience has involved a significant number of projects where innovation drove change into markets and market structures. Current projects include the demutualisation of the Ghana Stock Exchange, the design of a new leading surveillance system, technology systems selection, bid winning assistance.
Brian also chairs/speaks at a range of industry leading conferences, writes for journals, commentates on TV and authors empirically based research reports.
As well as providing consulting advice, Brian has undertaken a number of in-source interim executive management roles including:
Chief Financial and Technology Officer for PLUS Markets plc in London where he successfully led a team to deliver an award winning MiFID compliant trading and surveillance solution in 9 months which has facility competition and fragmentation in trading;
Interim Head of Finance for the investment and banking arm of the Department of Constitutional Affairs, part of Her Majesty’s Government, managing £6bn of assets;
Chief Executive Officer of the Bahamas International Securities Exchange.
Prior to establishing BTA Consulting Limited, Brian held the following positions:
Senior Manager with Price Waterhouse, London in charge of their global exchanges consultancy practice;
Vice President in the Equity Transactions Group at Merrill Lynch Europe Limited; and
An audit senior with Arthur Andersen & Co, London, where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant.
Brian holds a First Class Honours Degree in Geography from the Victoria University of Manchester.
Steve is a senior strategic business executive, technical architect and problem solver. He has over 30 years experience in successfully making technology work for the benefit of business. He has market vision, creativity and client empathy, backed with strong leadership and communication skills. He initiates and leads change, identifies opportunities and innovatively solves problems.
Whist at Logica Steve built and run several successful international businesses and has an excellent grasp of commercial disciplines. He has a reputation for consistently delivering the bottom line. During this period he ran the International Finance Business, the Finance Division (UK), Trading Systems Division (UK) and was Reuter Global Account Manager.
Steve has always specialised in the finance sector; specifically in banking, trading, and surveillance systems. He has been a key advisor to the Swiss Stock Exchange (SWX), and was responsible for the delivery of their real time market surveillance solution. This entered successful live operation in June 2007 and allows SWX traders to proactively manage risk. Steve has continued to refine the business implementation and advise on how this solution can evolve as market needs change.
Steve’s most recent assignment was to define business requirements for a state-of-the-art Market Supervisory and Surveillance Solution at a leading European MTF.
Ivan is a financial markets professional with over 25 years experience specialising in Market and IT strategies. He has a successful track record in creating and delivering very high performance trading/clearing systems and applying them to high volume equity and derivative markets. He spent his early career in IT Strategy/Planning and IT Development at Euronext LIFFE. In the former role he was responsible for vendor strategy, major application builds and product acquisitions. In the latter role ne was a member of the Executive Committee and responsible for setting up and managing an internal development software house (£10Mpa, 50+ staff).
Since leaving Euronext.LIFFE, Ivan has become an independent consultant, working on many assignments including:
Definition of requirements, management of RFP and vendor selection process for the DMCC (Government of Dubai);
Strategic review of IT Function, and assessment of Trading & Clearing System and Supplier agreements for the Dubai Gold & Commodity Exchange, UAE;
Technical, commercial and organisational review, and the generation of a crisis action plan for the National Stock Exchange, USA;
Review of equity trading system for use in novel market structure on behalf of Lehman Brothers;
Advisor to UK/Swedish multi-asset derivatives trading system supplier Baymarkets Ltd;
Strategic review of changes to the UK/European equity market as a result of forthcoming European market directive (MiFID), for the Financial Services Authority, including interviews with senior industry representatives (Banks, Regulators, QV and Exchanges), review of commercial impact and likely outcomes, analysis of industry protocols, definition and estimation of potential new IT infrastructure (£10M+) and creation of action plan;
Strategic IT study for Paypoint plc identifying weaknesses in existing architecture and organisational structure, defining and gaining Board agreement to a renewed IT architecture, and the creation of an investment plan (circa £6M);
Assessment of technology and infrastructure for Protx Ltd. (Internet PSP), prior to purchase of company;
Assessment of technology and infrastructure for Secpay Ltd. (Internet PSP), prior to purchase of company, including the creation of valuation, integration and investment plan;
Assessment of technology and infrastructure for Metacharge Ltd. (Internet PSP), prior to purchase of company;
IT Architecture and delivery plan, together with relevant contribution to business plan prior to funding for an Internet Gaming Sector start-up;
Review of software product with a view to commercialisation, and the development of an Investment and Infrastructure Plan for Gcrypt Ltd. (Secure email).
Peter is an executive level information technology practitioner and advisor with over 30 years Financial Services experience. He is technically current, a visionary, a lateral thinker and problem solver with strong business awareness. In his later career, he has been an IT Director at a major UK Investment Bank, a regional vice president for trading systems for a major US investment/commercial bank, a CIO/CTO for three start-up independent software vendors and latterly the COO of one of them. Peter’s experience spans most of the financial services sector including: Investment Banking, Retail and Commercial Banking, Securities Trading and Exchanges, Building Societies, Banking Security and anti-fraud.
In the last 10 years, since Peter left Investment Banking, he has advised many clients including:
Cost reduction and procurement advice to a major European securities exchange concerning the potential outsourcing of its main platform operations. The team identified savings of around €45 million p.a.;
Procurement advice to Clearstream Bank SA Luxembourg concerning acquisition of services for the joint venture Link-Up Markets for post trade processing of cross-border securities transactions in Europe;
Leading a team for Tradition France (Interdealer Broker) examining its fixed income trading systems strategy and conducted a review of its internal platforms against commercially available trading platforms;
Employed as Chief Operating Officer for ValidSoft Limited, an Irish Software Engineering Company, developing ultra-strong two-factor authentication and transaction verification technology using telephony to implement a second band for authentication/verification;
Technical due diligence on the IT organisation, systems and operations of LINK, the UK’s inter-bank ATM network provider, on behalf of Voca (formerly BACS) thus supporting the merger of LINK and Voca;
Advisor and bid manager for SMARTS Europe, the UK Subsidiary of SMARTS Pty Ltd, the World’s leading developer and corporate practitioner in the supply of market abuse detection and surveillance systems to Securities Exchanges and Regulators;
Advisor and supplier relationship manager on two major programmes to implement high performance quoting platforms for the trading of securitised derivatives for SWX and to implement a regional exchange in Germany.
