BTON Financial, the independent, broker-neutral dealing desk technology for investment managers, has today announced the appointment of electronic trading expert, Ray Tierney, as Non-Executive Director. Ray will play a key role in shaping the direction of the company and expanding BTON Financial’s U.S. footprint and plans to bring its technology and data-driven dealing desk solution to the global investment management community en masse.

Investment managers are increasingly looking to electronification and workflow automation to generate returns for end investors, while meeting increasing regulatory obligations and dealing with profit margin compression. By using BTON Financial’s independent, broker-neutral insourced dealing desk technology, investment managers are able to focus on identifying alpha generating trading opportunities through automated workflow processes and streamlined operations that vastly improve execution outcomes.

Ray joins BTON having held a variety of leadership roles in the financial markets industry including Global CEO of Trading Solutions at Bloomberg LLP where he oversaw 600+ employees across 3 business units and all aspects of the firm's OMS business, including product innovation, sales and strategy. Prior to Bloomberg Ray served as Global Head of Trading and Execution for Morgan Stanley Investment Management. 

Commenting on the announcement, Ray Tierney, said: “I am looking forward to working with BTON Financial’s team as it pursues its expansion plans in the U.S. The industry is evolving rapidly and is now ready for cutting edge data-driven technology to both reduce friction in the trading process and retain alpha. Cost pressures are at an all-time high and asset managers are ready to implement and adopt innovative financial solutions such as ours. BTON Financial makes it straightforward for investment managers to automate workflows and connect to all brokers through its proprietary Smart Broker Router, which is driven by machine learning, data and analysis to both provide and evidence best execution.”

Dan Shepherd, CEO & co-Founder said: “We are delighted to be joined by Ray in an advisory capacity. He brings tremendous expertise and specific industry knowledge to help us grow our business. Ray’s pedigree as an industry leader, driving product innovation, sales and strategy within electronic trading capabilities will be invaluable as we scale up and expand our footprint into North America to meet the considerable industry demand. We have made a number of strategic hires over the past months as the investment management industry is waking up to the potential that our technology can offer to automate workflows and evidence best execution to really add a great deal of value to the trading function at asset managers.”

BTON Financial is well positioned to help investment managers digitise, its smart broker router® is open source, cloud based and delivered as SaaS, making it easy to integrate into existing technology stacks and workflows.