Clear Street hires former Bank of America MD to run clearing

New York-based Clear Street said on Wednesday Chris Tufano has joined the group to run clearing, “building client relationships and advancing globally consistent clearing capabilities”.

Tufano joins Clear Street from Bank of America where he was a managing director, a member of the Board of Directors, and the global head of Clearing and Prime Brokerage Platform Transformation. Before Bank of America, Tufano worked at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Ed Tilly, chief executive of Clear Street, said: “Chris’ experience from the world’s top financial institutions is valuable to our clients and deepens the seamless services we provide them every step of the way.”

Clear Street launched last year a clearing service aimed at market-makers in US equities, one of a number of new deliveries from the group.

Tilly, who was head of US options giant Cboe Global Markets before joining Clear Street in July and becoming group CEO in September, added: “With Chris’ longstanding relationships in the space, as well as his unmatched institutional knowledge, our platform and value proposition continues to grow with purpose, centred around anticipating client needs.”

Clear Street has been hiring aggressively in the past 18 months.

The firm’s investment banking arm appointed in May two managing directors to run its new digital assets division targeting institutions keen on trading cryptocurrencies.

The group in April welcomed Hemal Purohit and Howard Wright in London to its growing European brokerage.

Purohit, a former Cboe Global Markets executive, joined as managing director of cross-asset sales. Wright joined the same business after five years at RJ O’Brien.

Clear Street hired in February John Levene, a former Goldman Sachs partner, to run the group’s prime brokerage arm in New York.

Clear Street became in December the eighth category one, ring-dealing member of the London Metal Exchange, effectively announcing the clearing broker’s arrival in London.