Clear Street (“Clear Street,” “the Company”), a financial technology firm modernizing the global capital markets and brokerage ecosystem, today announced that Co-Founder and CEO Chris Pento will assume an executive and partner role at White Bay, the family office of Co-Founder Uriel Cohen, effective at year-end 2024. At that time, Pento will depart his CEO role at Clear Street, and will remain on the Board of Directors where he will continue to guide the Company based on his expertise and leadership over six years of transformative and record-setting growth. Ed Tilly, the Company’s President, will become CEO & President upon Pento’s departure.
Chris Pento shared, “I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved at Clear Street. Our collaborative culture, exceptional team, and commitment to client service have driven our rapid growth and industry presence. The blend of tech and finance talent at Clear Street has allowed us to build horizontally scalable technology, disencumbered from decades-old infrastructure, integrated with the best capital markets teams on the street. Our product and service model is second to none, and our progress rolling out new technology solutions like Studio, our all-in-one portfolio management system, and service offerings like equity research and investment banking, has only accelerated.”
Pento continued, “When my co-founders and I started this business, we knew it was a multi-year journey that would require a significant effort to get us to scale. I initially committed to leading the company for five years, and now, six years later, we’ve made tremendous progress on our mission. We’ve successfully scaled the business and generated significant revenue, all while developing a product suite tailored to the complexities of today’s markets. This is the right moment to step away from my day to day operational role so that I have more time to partner with Uri on our next round of opportunities. We have every confidence in Ed to continue the successes we’ve had and to take us to new heights. I’m excited to continue advising and consulting Clear Street through my role on the Board.”
Since co-founding the Company in 2018, Chris Pento built Clear Street into a $2.1 billion enterprise with a formidable presence and compelling financial profile. Clear Street’s topline has consistently grown at a double digit year over year CAGR and, in the first half of 2024, the Company delivered accelerating sequential revenue growth from Q1 to Q2, driven by the continued expansion of both the Institutional and Active divisions. The Company launched futures clearing services earlier this year, and announced a definitive agreement to acquire Instinet’s Fox River algorithmic trading business, catering to many of the industry’s leading quant-driven funds. Under Pento’s leadership, premier talent and teams from across the technology and financial services sectors have joined Clear Street, rapidly building out a full-service value chain, replicable in markets around the world.
Uriel Cohen, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, stated, “Chris has been an exceptional partner and CEO at Clear Street, where his innovative thinking, determination and leadership drove our success. I’m looking forward to welcoming Chris to the White Bay team.”
Ed Tilly, Clear Street’s President, said, “What Chris has achieved for Clear Street since the founding in 2018 is extraordinary, and I’m grateful for his vision and commitment to this innovative business.”
Tilly continued, “In a landscape dominated by legacy players, Chris had the vision to combine a cloud-native tech platform with non-bank prime-brokerage and a relentless customer-centric focus. That’s a winning combination that we are repeating and scaling across markets, client types and geographies. We look forward to Chris’ ongoing guidance as he and I work closely together for the rest of the year, and then as he continues his presence on our Board and assumes his new role at White Bay.”
Tilly joined Clear Street in July after a successful decade-long tenure as Chief Executive Officer at CBOE Global Markets, Inc. (CBOE: CBOE), where he oversaw and was instrumental in growing market capitalization from $2.0 billion to more than $18.0 billion.
Built on a cloud-native platform supporting asset managers and active traders with a broad array of asset classes, Clear Street’s technology enables a single source of truth, meant to minimize risk, drive alpha and accelerate growth. The Company’s Institutional and Active divisions service a wide audience of clients across traditional and alternative asset managers, hedge funds and family offices, providing both high and low touch client service including securities lending, margin financing, clearing and custody, derivatives and execution. Clear Street’s cloud-native, technology-first platform and customer-centric model now supports more than 450 clients worldwide.