LCH.Clearnet to appoint Stephen Patriarco as Global Head of Collateral Services, U.S. Head of CaLM

08 June 2012

LCH.Clearnet Group Limited (LCH.Clearnet) is to appoint Stephen Patriarco as Global Head of Collateral Services, U.S. Head of Collateral and Liquidity Management (CaLM).  Stephen will be responsible for developing LCH.Clearnet’s collateral management capabilities on a global basis and will provide localised support in collateral and liquidity management to U.S. clients.  The appointment is further testament to LCH.Clearnet’s commitment to the U.S. marketplace and to the importance placed on creating collateral efficiencies for participants. 

Stephen has over 25 years’ experience in financial services and has spent a considerable amount of his career focusing on improving infrastructure and processes supporting financing and collateral management areas.  He joins from SJP Financial Consulting Services, a company which he founded to provide financial consulting services to a wide range of small and midsize enterprises.  Prior to this, Stephen spent 15 years at various major investment banks including Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch, where he held a variety of senior management positions, latterly as Global Head of Derivative Operations, Futures, and Collateral Management at Merrill Lynch.  He has a proven track record in developing and implementing new business opportunities and reengineering existing processes to be more efficient and cost effective. 

Andrew Howat, Group Head of CaLM said: “Stephen’s extensive industry expertise makes him an ideal candidate to help build on our already robust collateral and liquidity management capabilities.  This appointment reflects CaLM’s strategy to continually evolve to meet our clients’ growing global demands for effective collateral management solutions and further reinforces our commitment to the U.S. market.” 

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To view the press release as a pdf click here  
 
About LCH.Clearnet
The LCH.Clearnet Group is the leading independent clearing house group, serving major international exchanges and platforms as well as a range of OTC markets. It clears a broad range of asset classes, including securities, exchange-traded derivatives, commodities, energy, freight, interest rate swaps, foreign exchange, credit default swaps and euro- and sterling-denominated bonds and repos, and works closely with market participants and exchanges to identify and develop clearing services for new asset classes.

A clearing house sits in the middle of a trade, assuming the counterparty risk involved when two parties (or members) trade. When a trade is registered with a clearing house, that clearing house becomes the legal counterparty to the trade, ensuring financial performance of the trading parties; if one of the parties fails, the clearing house steps in. By assuming the counterparty risk, the clearing house underpins many important financial markets, facilitating trading and increasing confidence within these markets.

Initial and variation margin (or collateral) is collected from clearing members; should they fail, this margin is used to fulfill their obligations. The amount of margin is decided by the clearing house’s highly experienced risk management teams, which assesses a member’s positions and market risk on a daily basis. Both the soundness of the risk management approach and the resilience of its systems have been proven in recent times. LCH.Clearnet is regulated or overseen by the national securities regulator and/or central bank in each jurisdiction from which it operates.