A Dynamic Report of 51 Executive Moves of 31 Brokers, Fintechs & Crypto Firms Since Nov 2023

The calendar has turned to December 2023, and Fazzaco would like to wish everyone a very happy holiday in advance. This year, we have been continuously following the executive moves of various brokers and fintech companies in the financial sector, as well as some crypto firms. In the following article, we present a statistical analysis of the executive movements in the forex / crypto market from November 2023 to date (December 18).

Hiring vs. Promotion vs. Leaving

By filtering the Fazzaco News database, the data in this article uses a total of 32 news under the Executive Moves tag​ reported by Fazzaco since November 2023, involving 51 job changes across 31 companies.

From the perspective of company type, it is divided into three categories for statistics: namely, brokers (16); fintechs (12); and crypto firms (3). such classification is far from accurate for certain firms operate astride more fields, providing both trading as well as B2B tech solutions. Moreover, we did not include executive changes in large financial institutions that provide pan-financial services.

We categorized the personnel movements as follows:

External hiring: 34 people, of which 12 are from 7 brokers, 20 are from 11 fintechs, and 2 are from 2 crypto firms;

Internal promotion: 6 people, of which 5 are from 4 brokers and 1 is from 1 crypto exchange;

Leaving: 11 people, of which 9 are from 9 brokers, 1 is from 1 fintech, and 1 is from 1 crypto exchange (1 hopped jobs, 2 retired, and 2 left to start up their own business).

Therefore, from the above chart, we can roughly infer the following data distribution (as shown below): In the industry executive movements from November to December 18, 2023, 66.67% are hires, 11.76% are promotions, and the remaining 21.57% left.

By company type, brokers have seen 12 hires, 5 promotions, and 9 leavings; the executive moves in the fintechs were relatively simple, 20 hired, 1 left. Among the 4 moves in the crypto firms, 2 hired, 1 promoted and 1 left.

Executive Moves Worth Noting

One of the most noteworthy executive changes in November was the resignation of Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, the former CEO of Binance exchange​, after he pleaded guilty. On November 21, CZ officially reached a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, involving charges of money laundering, bank fraud, violating sanctions, and more. After pleading guilty, CZ announced on social media the next day that he had resigned from his position as CEO. Fazzaco published an article titled "Guilty and Gone: Binance CEO Quits as Crypto Titan Struggles with Regulatory Pressure​" in first time after the incident.

In addition, many companies have expanded their executive teams on a large scale to cope with the rapidly growing business demand. This includes SquaredFinancial strengthening its leadership team with six senior hires​, and BlueFlame AI announcing the appointment of four industry veterans to bolster its business strategy and operations groups​.

On the other hand, Fazzaco also noticed that as the year-end approached, some company executives left to start their own businesses. This includes Ali Marwani leaving OneRoyal after twelve years, pivoting to start a new CFD brokerage, PrimaCapital Limited​; and Andrew Gibson resigning from the role of Head of Product Development, FX and CFDs at Tavira Securities Dubai after one year and nine months, and started to launch his own Cyprus-based FX brokerage, TimberFX​.