Fintech moves: Zinnia, Point72, Sillicon Valley Bank

Today’s round-up of financial technology moves is heavily dominated by asset management hires, as the end of Q3 brings 2023 tech budgets into sharper focus and spurs a raft of technology hires and moves.

Zinnia

Rafi Moscowitz, the former CTO of New York-based investment manager, Fir Tree Partners, has joined open insurance provider, Zinnia, as CTO. Moscowitz started at Zinnia (formerly SE2), this week, following three months, between May and July, spent in the CTO seat at hedge fund, SkyBridge Partners.

Prior to SkyBridge, Moscowitz led the technology function at Fir Tree for seven years. In that role, he managed hedge fund’s IT infrastructure department including multiple offices and data centers, servers, storage, networking, virtualisation, Office365, Azure, incident response, cybersecurity, desktops, phones, applications, and support.

The role also saw him spearhead a transition to the cloud and lead technological preparations for Covid-19 and distance working.

Prior to Fir Tree, Moscowitz cut his teeth at various finance and investment management shops, including multi-year tenures at Knight Trading Group and Tudor.

Point72

Also in the asset management industry, Point72 has brought on Terence Schofield to head up its digital assets technology practice. Schofield joins from crypto hedge fund Pantera Capital, where he spent nine months as CTO between January and September this year.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Schofield previously worked at agricultural distributor, Cargill. He joined the company as a quantitative trading technology lead in April 2020 and subsequently progressed to CTO, quantitative trading and execution.

Earlier in his career, Schofield worked in various technology engineering roles across finance, at the likes of Schonfeld, Barclays, Bloomberg and Thompson Reuters. Between October 2013 and December 2019, he worked at Leucadia-owned asset manager, Lake Hill, firstly as CTO and latterly progressing to partner.

Sillicon Valley Bank

The San Francisco based bank, owned by SVB financial group, has brought on Bank of America veteran, Alla Whitston, as Chief Information Officer for its commercial bank and venture investment division, SVB Capital.

Whitston joined the bank, which provides financing and financial services to entrepreneurs and privately funded businesses, in September. Between 2018 and September 2022, she worked as CTO at CIT, a division of First Citizens Bank. In the role, she was responsible for technology strategy and architecture, application development, infrastructure, end-user services, enterprise data, BI and digital automation, and user and client experience.

Prior to this, Whitstone spent seven years at Bank of America, latterly as CTO, for global workspace services and enterprise functions. Her career also includes senior technology stints at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

BNY Mellon

BNY Mellon has announced that Bana Akkad-Azhari has been promoted to head of treasury services Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

In her new role, Akkad-Azhari is responsible for fostering strategic growth in the region across payments, liquidity and trade finance. Leveraging new product developments and industry initiatives she will help meet growing client demand for faster payments and robust supply chain financing.

Akkad-Azhari first joined BNY Mellon in 2006 as chief representative for Lebanon and became treasury services’ head of relationship management for MEA and the commonwealth of independent states in 2014. Most recently, she served as co-head of treasury services EMEA. Operating from her new base in London, Akkad-Azhari reports to Eric Boughner, head of relationship management and business development for treasury services.

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