Digital asset custody and trading startup Copper has appointed the former chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond as chairman.
Hammond was hired by Copper as a special advisor to the board in October 2021. Since then, the firm has grown from 50 to over 300 people, doubling revenues. Landmark deals with leading financial institutions have included Copper becoming the infrastructure partner of State Street Digital, onboarding hedge funds and partnering with multiple participants in the Defi ecosystem.
In appointing Hammond, Copper will be leaning on his connections and high public profile to make the case for the need to connect traditional finance with distributed ledger technology and reform the UK’s regulatory framework governing digital assets.
Says Hammond: "Recent security and regulatory challenges affecting the digital asset sector have only served to emphasise the need for safe, well-regulated trading infrastructure. I remain firmly of the view that the post-Brexit UK financial services sector needs to embrace distributed ledger technology as a key part of its strategy to remain a major global financial centre. I look forward to continuing to make the case for this potential to be realised as chairman of Copper.”
Since quitting Parliament in 2019, Hammond has been an active participant in the UK fintech scene, acting as an advisor to OakNorth, and being enlisted to help formulate plans for the creation of a new £1 billion fintech fund to accelerate the growth of promising UK scale-ups.
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