AcadiaSoft Hires COO

Chris Walsh, an expert in post-trade messaging services, has joined AcadiaSoft, Inc. as chief operating officer, according to the company’s announcement today.

As COO of AcadiaSoft, Walsh will be responsible for the day-to-day business operations of the company. AcadiaSoft is a provider of margin automation for counterparties in OTC derivatives, whose customers are the world’s largest investment banks.

“Chris’s breadth of knowledge in the financial services industry, which spans many areas including trading, investment accounting as well as middle- and back-office operations, will strengthen AcadiaSoft’s position as our company continues to carry a large percentage of the OTC market on MarginSphere,” commented AcadiaSoft co-founder and CEO Craig Welch in today’s release.

For the past two decades Walsh has been a leader and innovator in the financial messaging field, according to the release. During the 1990s he held multiple management positions at Thomson Financial’s Electronic Settlement Group (ESG), where he built, launched and grew its suite of post-trade messaging services. Walsh was granted multiple patents in this field and was instrumetnal in the formation of Omgeo LLC, a joint venture and post-trade utility formed by ESG and Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. (DTCC). Next, Walsh founded and grew Radius Partners, a financial messaging software provider that was eventually acquired by Fundtech Corp. Walsh then joined NYFIX, Inc. in 2007 as its global head of order management and strategy where he was part of a team that was able to eventually sell the front-office messaging company. After the sale of NYFIX to NYSE Euronext in 2009, Walsh served as SVP in the company’s technologies division.

Commenting on his career move, Walsh said, “Counterparty credit risk is a major issue today, and it is an exciting time to join AcadiaSoft as the rapid growth of MarginSphere confirms the important need for an automated messaging system for collateral management.”

AcadiaSoft provides a central messaging service for the electronic exchange of margin calls, substitutions and interest statements between derivatives counterparts involved in collateral management. The company's messaging service is addressing the needs of banks and their buy-side clients who are subject margin calls and must post collateral as part of the derivatives regulatory overhaul under Dodd Frank.

On Feb. 7, AcadiaSoft announced that Bluebay Asset Management, Cheyne Capital Management and Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) would be live on MarginSphere within the first two quarster of 2012. Late last year, AcadiaSoft announced that Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and J.P. Morgan were among the first sell-side firms to go live on the solution. Most recently, Barclays, BofA Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley went live on MarginSphere.

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio