Roberto Rivero, former head of sales and marketing at the London Stock Exchange's information services division, has teamed up with Mike Hodgson, product development manager at the same unit, to establish a consulting practice for financial IT firms, banks and exchanges.
With a particular focus on information services, the new practice - dubbed Intelligent Growth - provides advice on product and business development, marketing and sales, and it conducts audits on behalf of information owners like exchanges.
Prior to joining the LSE, Rivero was at royalblue financial as marketing director of fidessaNet. Before this he was product marketing director at Primark where he oversaw development of the vendor's financial data system Topic.
Hodgson was at the LSE for 14 years. Prior to this he was at Extel Financial for two years.
The two are joined by five other consultants who have worked at vendor outfits such as Bloomberg, Liffe, Thomson Financial and Virt-X– as well as at user firms like HSCB, F&C and WestLB.
Says Rivero: "Collectively, we have over 150 years' experience in the disciplines we are consulting in. Roughly half of that time has been spent in Financial IT, 30% in the financial industry and the balance in general IT."
ALthough not prepared to discuss individual clients, Rivero says the practice is already operating at over 55% of capacity. He says: "Within our niche, we already have an interesting mix of assignments and a diverse list of customers."