Curve chief Ross finds new role at LSEG after market closes

The LSE Group has said CurveGlobal chief executive Andy Ross is staying on at the UK exchange after it closes the interest rates market as planned on Friday.

The LSE said CurveGlobal will close on Friday January 28 in line with guidance issued in September last year, as first reported by Global Investor Group.

The exchange also said on Monday that Ross, who ran Curve since its launch in 2016, is moving into a new position within the group.

A spokeswoman for the British exchange group confirmed Ross will shortly become head of the Digital Product Group in its Post-Trade division.

Global Investor understands Ross has assumed an interim role co-ordinating various projects across LSEG’s post-trade services including LCH Ltd, LCH SA, SwapAgent and its trade repository UnaVista.

Global Investor also understands the handful of other CurveGlobal staff have either been found new roles within the group, or were offered roles but decided to leave.

So Friday marks the end of the latest bid to break the dominance of the Intercontinental Exchange and Deutsche Boerse’s Eurex over the European interest rate futures market.

Ross said in September, when the closure of Curve was announced, the business was closing because its shareholders had decided to withhold the necessary funding to continue the project.

Ross said in September last year: “The shareholders of CurveGlobal have reviewed the business and taken the decision not to put any additional funds in, so we are winding down its business.”

The chief executive said he had been hopefully of winning at least a decent chunk of the new market in futures linked to the UK alternative to Libor but ICE cleaned up here also.

In a frank interview, Ross told Global Investor in September getting people to change their behaviour is hard, while admitting that Curve’s business proposition was not sufficiently different to those of the firms it was trying to disrupt.