The London Stock Exchange has confirmed the appointment of Xavier Rolet as its next chief executive. The former Lehman Brothers man will take over from Clara Furse in mid-May.
Rolet spent eight years at Lehman, most recently as CEO of its French operations. Prior to his role in France, Rolet worked at the bank's London office, handling relations with European exchanges, including the LSE. He has also sat on the Exchange's strategy committee.
Before joining Lehman, Rolet worked for Goldman Sachs in equity trading. He has also spent time at Credit Suisse First Boston and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson.
Furse, who will remain at the LSE until the AGM in July, spent much of her time in charge fighting off a succession of hostile take-over attempts. Seen as a prize scalp for its strategic position in Europe, the Exchange's share price soared. But its position has more recently been threatened by a host of new alternative trading platforms, which have undercut and challenged the LSE's traditional business model and succeeded in winning market share.
Commenting on Rolet's appointment, Chris Gibson-Smith, LSE chairman says: "With his deep knowledge of the Exchange's customers and understanding of the exchange business, plus his strategic mindset, Xavier is uniquely well placed to take the Group forward in the next phase of its development."
Separately, rival platform Chi-X Europe has appointed two new strategic hires: Denzil Jenkins as director of regulation and Florian Miciu as head of technology.
Jenkins will direct Chi-X Europe's compliance, market supervision and regulatory liaison functions. He joins from the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA), where he managed wholesale investment banking supervision special projects. Prior to that, Mr. Jenkins was responsible for the team that supervised equity exchanges and MTFs in the UK, both before and after the implementation of MiFID in November 2007.
Miciu brings more than 15 years experience building technology products and platforms, primarily electronic trading systems for equities and government debt, for capital markets institutions. Miciu joins Chi-X Europe after a brief tenure at Turquoise, and prior to that spent ten years in Credit Suisse's technology and equity trading departments.