When enough is enough! Standard Chartered Head of FX Prime Brokerage becomes train driver
After leading Standard Chartered’s entry into FX Intermediation and heading the firm’s prime brokerage division, Darren Hill has left the entire industry to become a train driver at Crossrail
Life at senior executive level is very interesting for the vast majority of those in our highly engaging and very progressive industry, with very few leading figures in the retail or institutional world making the decision to end their career.
In the case of Darren Hill, a complete change of career does not represent him going off the rails, but is more a case of going on rails!
Mr. Hill joined Standard Chartered in early 2014 as Head of FX Intermediation Services (effectively the prime brokerage unit) at a time during which Standard Chartered, the 12th largest FX dealer in the world was expanding its capabilities and services in the institutional FX business.
Mr. Hill’s appointment at the time was part of an expansion of service by Standard Chartered into the full provision of FX intermediation and FX clearing services, which went live in April 2015, approximately one year after his appointment.
This was a very poignant development period within Standard Chartered’s FX prime brokerage division, the first spot FX intermediation clients having gone live in the spring of last year, representing a new service on the bank’s Eclipse platform which intended to provide liquidity from ECNs whilst the fuller product was aimed toward the fund market.
At that time, Andrew Sterry, Co-Head of Execution and Clearing at Standard Chartered’s Eclipse liquidity and portfolio division said that the intermediation services led by Darren Hill were a “natural complement” to the bank’s clearing product.
Integral to this was Standard Chartered’s engagement with central counterparties in Europe and Asia and will be one of the initial providers of FX clearing with ForexClear, SGX and HKEx when the clearing mandate is introduced.
Ending his extensive career at the very upper echelons of the interbank FX business to join Crossrail as a train driver, Mr. Hill’s career move certainly proves that not everyone shares the same enthusiasm as the vast majority of us for the FX business.
