London Stock Exchange Names Rolet as New CEO, Replacing Furse
By Nandini Sukumar
London Stock Exchange Group Plc named Xavier Rolet to succeed Clara Furse as chief executive officer, bringing an end to her eight-year reign at Europe’s oldest independent bourse.
Rolet, 49, who was head of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in France until Nomura Holdings Inc. bought its European investment bank last year, will join the board on March 16, the exchange said in a Regulatory News Service statement today. He ran equity trading at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., European equities at Credit Suisse First Boston and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson before joining Lehman in 2000. He will start as CEO on May 20.
Under Furse, LSE’s first female CEO, the bourse fought off five takeover offers in two years and bought the operator of the Milan stock exchange in 2007. While LSE has remained independent, rivals including Euronext NV, Deutsche Boerse AG and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. have forged alliances, adding to the range of products they offer and giving them greater size. LSE’s shares lost 74 percent last year on concern falling stock prices and competition from electronic exchanges will erode earnings.
“He’s a very smart and capable man and has a good track record,” said Bruce Weber, professor of finance at the London Business School. “He’s been a customer and probably knows the good side and bad side of the exchange as well as anyone. He sees it from the customer perspective and not the old stock exchange monopoly perspective.”
Rolet agreed to give a lecture to Weber’s students last year on how trading desks work and the way they coordinate with exchanges. He was educated at France’s Ecole Superieure de Commerce and has a masters in business administration from Columbia University.
Lisbon-Dakar Rally
Rolet, who took part in the Lisbon-Dakar Rally in 2007 to raise money for Medecins Sans Frontieres, faces a barrage of new rivals including so-called multilateral trading facilities Turquoise and Chi-X Europe Ltd., which are backed by investment banks, and European ventures of Bats Trading Inc. and Nasdaq OMX. The new entrants have taken about a quarter of LSE’s business by offering cheaper trading and clearing of stocks listed on its markets and faster trades.
“Going forward the LSE faces headwinds in equity trading,” said Dirk Hoffmann-Becking, exchange analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., in a Jan. 22 note to investors. “Low market caps, slowing trading velocity, market share erosion, pricing pressure, a slow IPO market, and weakening demand for market information.”
The exchange, which started in 1698 when a group of brokers met in Jonathan’s Coffee House to trade stocks and commodities, hired Furse, 51, in 2001 after shareholders forced Gavin Casey to resign following a failed attempt to merge with Frankfurt- based Deutsche Boerse.
source : Bloomberg
