Cobalt, the foreign exchange (FX) infrastructure based on shared ledger and high performance technology, has hired five experienced professionals to lead its drive to re-engineer the FX market.

Post-trade FX is currently riddled with complex legacy systems and manual processes, creating unnecessary cost and risk across the market. The new hires bring a wealth of FX experience to the company and will play an important role in the rollout of Cobalt’s shared infrastructure which optimises risk management and slashes cost by up to 80%.

Bob Linton, based in New York, has become head of connectivity and onboarding at Cobalt. He will be responsible for replacing old, legacy technology incumbent in many institutions’ post-trade FX operations with Cobalt’s low latency, high performance shared ledger technology. He joins following a 13-year stint at market infrastructure technology provider, Traiana. 

Dan Evans was appointed product analytics lead and is focused on product innovation and reporting as well as highlighting the hidden opportunities for financial institutions. Dan is experienced in analysing FX trading data both as a director of FX trading at UBS, where he spent seven years, and as the director of his own consultancy.

John Fitzgerald joins as information security manager. John has over 15 years in risk and security management and prior to joining Cobalt, he was the lead for information security at Rathbone Brothers Plc.

Nitin Talwar has been appointed head of support. He has over 13 years’ experience in the FX industry having previously worked for institutions including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, RBS/Natwest Markets and Credit Suisse.

Kamaldeep Bhachu is now a senior business analyst at Cobalt. He previously worked at Murex and in the FX and treasury divisions at Morgan Stanley, UBS and Royal Bank of Canada. He brings extensive front to back knowledge of the FX cash and derivatives business.

Darren Coote, managing director of Cobalt, commented: “We are thrilled to welcome Bob, Dan, John, Nitin and Kamaldeep to the rapidly expanding Cobalt team. They bring a breadth of FX experience across the interdealer and prime broker space and have an intimate knowledge of the competitive landscape as well as financial institutions’ systems. Each will play a key role in reengineering the FX market from the ground up, getting rid of legacy systems and replacing them with new technology which is more suitable for the low-latency FX market of today.”