The London Stock Exchange has appointed 49-year-old David Schwimmer as its new CEO, starting on 1 August. He has been working for investment bank Goldman Sachs for the last 20 years. The news was released in an LSE press release on 13 April.
He replaces Xavier Rolet, who left the LSE in November as part of a governance crisis sparked by 5% shareholder TCI Fund Management. Since then David Warren has run LSE as interim chief executive and he will return to his job as LSE’s chief financial officer.
Schwimmer, based in New York, is the head of Goldman Sachs’ market structure business and metals and mining businesses.
Schwimmer’s career at Goldman Sachs includes: advising exchanges and stockbrokers, working as chief of staff to chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, when he was the bank’s chief operating officer, jointly running the bank’s business in Russia (2006-2009) and then becoming head of metals and mining in 2011. He returned to advising exchanges in 2017 as he added the role of the head of market structure.
According to the LSE Chairman, Donald Brydon, in the press release: “David is a leader with great experience in the financial market infrastructure sector, which he has been closely involved in throughout his investment banking career, as well as capital markets experience in both developed and emerging markets. He is well known for his robust intellect and partnership approach with clients and colleagues alike.”
A key task will be to manage the Brexit transition, and defend the LSE’s position as the world’s biggest clearing house for derivative transactions against competition from European exchanges, particularly Germany’s Deutsche Börse. LSE controls London Clearing House (LCH), which processes about three-quarters of the €1 trillion-a-day ($1.2trn) clearing market for derivatives, acting as a middleman between buyers and sellers of complex contracts.
He has extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions and will be able to buy new companies in line with LSE strategy. According to the Financial Times Rolet had turned the LSE into a “£15bn ($21bn) European powerhouse via a string of deals”. A merger with Deutsche Börse AG failed in 2017 and there has been speculation that US group Intercontinental Exchange could bid for LSE, although ICE says that one issue is the UK’s future outside Brexit. Chicago Mercantile Exchange has also been described as a potential bidder.
It quotes Bill Brodsky, former chief executive of Cboe Global Markets: “He’s a very articulate, very intelligent, very engaging personality… David has a deep global markets background and is extremely knowledgeable about the industry. He is eminently qualified to lead London Stock Exchange Group.”
The LSE says Schwimmer will be paid £775,000 ($1.1m) plus a bonus opportunity of up to 225% and will receive £1.05m ($1.5m) to make up for not getting his 2018 bonus from the US investment bank, plus other incentives. He is a graduate in English from Yale and with a JD degree from Harvard Law School. His passions are baseball (Mets) and outdoors, according to Bloomberg.
