Digital Asset Holdings targets growth with new hires

Digital Asset Holdings has turned to global banks to make several key senior hires across its offices. Carol Mathis has joined as CFO from RBS; Josh Varsano, formerly at Point72 Asset Management, is chief human resources officer; Gavin Wells is head of Europe; Kelly Mathieson is product manager; Gordon Weir is head of delivery; Andrew Pisano is business development director; Emnet Rios is director of finance and operations and Martin Korbmacher is a strategic adviser.
Source: Digital Asset Holdings

Digital Asset, a developer of distributed ledger technology for the financial services industry, today announced that it has made several key senior hires across its global offices.

The company has appointed Carol Mathis as its Chief Financial Officer. Mathis joins from RBS Corporate and Institutional Bank where she was Chief Operating Officer and previously CFO. The company has also hired Josh Varsano as Chief Human Resources Officer, Gavin Wells as Head of Europe, Kelly Mathieson as Product Manager, Gordon Weir as Head of Delivery, Andrew Pisano as Business Development Director, Emnet Rios as Director of Finance and Operations and Martin Korbmacher as a Strategic Advisor to help scale Digital Asset’s accelerated growth.



These recent appointments reflect the continued development of Digital Asset’s senior team and follow several key hires over the past year, signaling the firm’s commitment to expanding its services to meet the needs of its clients. Mathis, Varsano, Mathieson, Pisano and Rios are based in New York, while Wells and Weir are based in London. Korbmacher will be based in Frankfurt.



“I am delighted to welcome such talented and experienced individuals to our team. We are privileged to tap into the expertise of these world-class leaders with deep expertise and proven track records in the specific areas that will be critical to accelerating our efforts to the benefit of our customers,” said Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset.



Mathis brings extensive leadership experience in finance, treasury and operations. She joins Digital Asset from RBS’ Corporate and Institutional Bank where she spent nearly three years as COO and Managing Director. Prior to that, she was Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director of the firm for more than twelve years. Before joining RBS, Mathis was a Partner at at PricewaterhouseCoopers in its Capital Markets Assurance Division where she spent twelve years.



Varsano has built and led teams across consumer and financial services and was most recently the Global Head of Human Resources for Point72 Asset Management. Prior to this, he was at J.P.Morgan Chase for eight years as an HR Managing Director, Consumer and Community Banking and also led the firm’s Global Experienced and Executive Recruiting function. Varsano has also held senior HR positions at various firms including Cigna, UBS and IBM.



Wells is an industry executive who spent eight years at LCH.Clearnet, working with participants from across the market to deliver the first clearing service for Foreign Exchange, known as ForexClear. In that role, he was also part of the Executive Committee of the clearing house. Before that, Wells worked as a Managing Director at Citigroup for fifteen years in a variety of roles spanning FX trading, e-commerce, algorithmic trading and prime brokerage.



Mathieson also brings a wealth of financial services experience after spending twenty-six years at J.P.Morgan Chase and three years at Goldman Sachs. Most recently, Mathieson was Head of J.P.Morgan’s Global Collateral Management and Securities Clearing businesses. Mathieson was also instrumental in aiding the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the tri-party repo reforms post-2008. Other roles at J.P.Morgan included Head of Global Custody Product and Head of Online Brokerage Product Asset Management.



Weir has a significant amount of experience in lean and agile thinking within capital markets and joins the company from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he was the Head of Securities Operations Tech Americas, and most recently the Head of Development Transformation across Global Technology and Operations. Before this, Weir led the replacement of the global clearing and settlement systems for the equities business at UBS. Weir has also worked at PwC and IBM where he worked on large scale software delivery and numerous integration programs.



Pisano brings both distributed ledger and business development knowledge after joining Digital Asset from CME Group’s Digitization Group where he helped define the company’s blockchain strategy and commercialized proofs-of-concepts. Pisano has also held other roles at CME within Products and Services and has previously worked at Green Exchange and KPMG.



Rios joins from RBS after spending more than eleven years in a variety of roles including Director of Financial Planning and Analysis. She possesses a number of core competencies relating to financial modelling, strategic planning and management reporting. Prior to RBS, Rios spent five years at IBM serving in various positions spanning budgeting, forecasting and financial performance reporting.



Korbmacher is the Founder and Managing Director of Event Horizon Capital & Advisory GmbH, an independent advisory and investment banking boutique. Prior to that, he spent more than seven years at Credit Suisse as the Head of Investment Banking for Germany & Austria. Korbmacher has also held senior roles at Dresdner Kleinwort and J.P.Morgan, adding further financial services experience to Digital Asset.



Earlier this year, Digital Asset announced that it was opening a London office to support its clients and increase its presence in the UK and European markets. Justin Amos, a former Managing Director at NICE Actimize was appointed as Head of Europe but shortly thereafter relocated to Sydney to build out Digital Asset’s Australia office following the selection by ASX to design the world’s first national scale post-trade solution utilizing distributed ledger technology. Wells has since taken over as Head of Europe with Amos taking on the role of Head of APAC.