Calastone Limited, the independent cross-border transaction network for the mutual funds industry, announced today the appointment of Alexander Hofmann as Director of Sales.
Reporting to Calastone's Managing Director and co-founder Kevin Lee, Alexander will be focused on the United Kingdom, Ireland and Scandinavian regions. His responsibilities will be twofold: to sign up new fund providers, fund distributors and transfer agencies and to ensure that Calastone provides exemplary account relationship support for its existing participants.
Alexander joins Calastone from Data Explorers, the securities lending specialists, where he was Head of Sales for Index Explorer. During Alexander's tenure at Data Explorers, he was instrumental in helping the company double turnover between 2007 and 2009. Prior to joining Data Explorers in 2007, Alexander was Head of Data Sales at Citywire where he led the team selling quantitative ratings throughout the United Kingdom and Europe. During Alexander's earlier career, he worked in the sales functions of Bloomberg L.P and in settlements at Credit Agricole Indosuez. Alexander is fluent in French and German.
Commenting on the appointment, Kevin Lee, joint-founder and Managing Director of Calastone Limited said, "We are delighted that someone with Alexander's experience is joining our growing team of industry experts. Core to the continued growth of Calastone is a strong management and sales team which will enable us to expand and deliver the services required by the market for the market. We're seeing on average, more than two new clients sign up to our transaction network and settlement service each month, a pace which underpins the value that Calastone is bringing to help the mutual fund industry become more efficient."
Alexander Hofmann added, "I have admired Calastone's approach to providing a unique, disruptive service helping the mutual fund industry reap the benefits of automation in transacting and settlement of its orders. As we expand into Luxembourg and Asia, it is important that we remain focused on our core clients: the fund managers, distributors and transfer agents who are signing up and those which have supported Calastone from the beginning. These clients have asked us to add more and more connections to the messaging network and it is my job to accelerate the rate at which we add new fund providers, distributors and transfer agents. Managing the growth which Calastone is presently experiencing offers a fantastic challenge and we look forward to announcing new products and initiatives which will benefit the industry. Calastone has firmly established itself as the only independent cross-border transaction network of choice in a relatively short period of time and I look forward to helping them continue to cement this position in the future."