Reuters director of STP Tony Kirby has become one of the first casualties of the massive job-cutting programme outlined by the stricken news and information group last month.
Kirby's redundancy comes a year after he was recruited by Reuters CEO Tom Glocer with a brief to engineer and drive an enterprise-wide strategy for the vendor's participation in STP across asset classes. The move to disband Kirby's team comes as Reuters scales back its ambitions for straight-through processing and concentrates on its core information services.
The writing was on the wall for Kirby late last year when Reuters pulled out of the Synetix reference data joint venture it had established nine months earlier with CapCo. The reference data business was identified as one of the key STP enablers for the securities industry by Reuters and enthusiastically promoted by Kirby during his tenure.
Much of the blame for Reuters current predicament has been laid at the door of Glocer's predecessors and the excesses of the late 90s tech boom. Kirby, however, was recruited under Glocer's watch from trade processing venture Bolero.
A former director of the now-defunct global straight-through processing association, Kirby's appointment was billed as a demonstration of Glocer's commitment to the STP marketplace.
His departure reflects the new realities at Reuters HQ, as the vendor hones its focus to reflect increased competition to its core business from rivals Thomson Financial and Bloomberg.