About Us

Company history

From day one, we decided that HQLAx would be a platform built by the market, for the market.

Founded by financial market practitioners in search of a solution:

HQLAx was born out of first-hand experience of the frustrations and pain-points deriving from inefficient collateral mobility.

Developed in partnership with Tier 1 organisations:​

Global Custodians and Triparty Agents including Bank of New York Mellon, BNP Securities Services, Citibank, Clearstream, Euroclear, and J.P. Morgan.​

We have been operating successfully since 2017 in a highly regulated market. We have 12+ Tier 1 strategic partners across the industry.

We were the first to complete a security lending transaction on blockchain (2018), and the first to demonstrate a cross-chain repo swap (Dec 2022).

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Guido Stroemer
Co-founder and CEO
Guido is a financial market veteran with over 25 years of professional work experience in a variety of trading, risk management and senior leadership positions, most recently as global head of repo trading at UBS.
Olly Benkert
Co-founder and Chairman
Olly is an Investment Banking veteran having spent over two decades at Goldman Sachs.
Jens Hachmeister
Managing Director,  DLT Assets -
Deutsche Börse
Jens Hachmeister is part of the management team of Deutsche Börse Group and with the company since 2000. After holding a number of management positions such as Chief HR Officer and Chief of Staff, he is now focusing on new technologies. As a Managing Director Jens is responsible for the group wide business development in the field of DLT, Digital Assets and New Market Structures since April 2018. Prior to joining DBG he initially worked as a management consultant at KPMG. Jens Hachmeister holds a degree in business administration.
David Rutter
Founder and CEO - R3
David E Rutter is the founder and CEO of R3, an enterprise software company empowering the next generation of blockchain innovation through its flagship platform, Corda. Since 2015, he has grown the company of over 250 employees in 13 countries to become the leading enterprise blockchain provider and has built a thriving ecosystem of more than 300 diverse firms building on and supporting the platform globally.
Simon Squire
Global Head of Product Management
for the Clearance and Collateral Management
Business - BNY Mellon
Simon is the Global Head of Product Management for the Clearance and Collateral Management Business at BNY Mellon, driving the business strategy and leading initiatives that enhance client experience and product capabilities, including strategic partnerships with external firms. Prior to joining BNY Mellon in 2017, Simon spent over a decade at Goldman Sachs.
Mathew McDermott
Managing Director - Global Head of
Digital Assets - Goldman Sachs
Mathew is global head of Digital Assets for Goldman Sachs, having held a number of different roles since joining in 2005, most recently global head of Cross Asset Financing. Mathew is a board member of the International Securities Lending Association and serves on a number of committees at GS, notably the Goldman Sachs International Asset and Liability Committee and the Goldman Sachs International Bank Management Committee. Prior to joining the firm, Mathew worked at Morgan Stanley.
Frédéric Pascal
Head of Market & Financing Services - BNPP
Frédéric has nearly 20 years experience in BNP Paribas, for over 9 years he has held the position of Head of ALM Treasury & Chief Financial Resources Officer and has recently been appointed Head of Market & Financing Services.
Marton Szigeti
Global Head - Banking, Funding
and Financing - Clearstream
Marton Szigeti is the Clearstream Global Head of Banking, Funding and Financing. Prior to joining Clearstream, Marton spent 7 years at Deutsche Bank, where he held a variety of senior roles. He also spent time at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan where he focused on market structure strategy and principal strategic investments.
Scott Lucas
Managing Director,
Head of Markets DLT - J.P. Morgan
Scott is the Head of Markets DLT at J.P. Morgan where he is responsible for building DLT based trading businesses, and representing J.P. Morgan on select industry initiatives and wider market developments related to DLT. Scott joined the Markets business after roles within the Chief Investment Office, Treasury, Global Corporate Bank and Treasury Services. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan in 2010, Scott served as an Infantry Officer for 13 years, in the Australian and then British Army.
Jamie Anderson
Managing Director,
Global Head of Collateral Treasury Trading
Jamie Anderson’s primary responsibility is the Global Head of Collateral Treasury Trading, based in London. His remit includes managing the funding and liquidity for Global Markets division, cross asset collateral optimisation as well as providing secured financing solutions for clients. He also manages Financial Resource Optimisation for Securities Financing and jointly leads the Prime Services Client Pricing and Analytics Team.  Jamie has 20+ years of securities finance experience. Prior to working at HSBC he held trading roles at Citadel in the Portfolio Financing area and JPMorgan/Bear Stearns in Prime Finance. He started his career at Goldman Sachs.
Charlie Amesbury
Sales
Charlie spent 4 years working for Morgan Stanley in their Prime Brokerage department, managing risk oversight, operational efficiencies and commercial optimisation of the hedge funds he covered.
Geoffrey Arend
Chief Financial Officer
Geoffrey brings over 13 years’ experience working as a Finance professional serving a large range of international clients. He is passionate about innovation and has an extensive expertise in financial reporting, controlling, planning and structuring. Prior to HQLAᵡ he was Director at RSM Luxembourg.
Maurizio Bello
Product Development
Maurizio's career journey has taken him across 7 European countries. His first experience in FinTech happened at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank.
Olly Benkert
Co-founder and Advisor
Olly is an Investment Banking veteran having spent over two decades at Goldman Sachs.
Matthew Benz
General Counsel
Matthew has over 12 years of experience in both the US and Europe in corporate governance, administration, securities, finance, compliance, strategic contracts and regulatory affairs.
Raoul Bhoedjang
CTO
Raoul has been creating innovative software for over 25 years. He has worked in academia, government, and industry, developing high-speed network protocols, big-data forensic processing engines, banking security software, and blockchain solutions.
Julien Bordellier
DevOps Lead
Julien has worked on a wide range of projects, from writing software to manage and automate multi-tier cloud infrastructure to developing highly available applications.
Yacine Boumekik
IT Support Engineer
Yacine has worked for almost 13 years in IT support & engineering covering a broad range of technologies. Before joining HQLA-x as an IT System Administrator, he worked as an IT Support Engineer for a famous Swiss private bank and as a Infrastructure Administrator for a FinTech bank, both located in Luxembourg. He became a specialist in providing a high-quality level of support as well as managing, developing, and improving IT Infrastructure in the financial sector.
Aly Crean
Business Development
Aly has completed a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English and Media, a Master’s Degree in Business Management and a Diploma in Digital Marketing. She has international experience progressing from graduate program trainee in the European Investment Bank and then more recently moving into brand and e-commerce marketing at Wunderman Thompson Luxembourg.
Michael Friedman
Business Development
Michael is a Business Analyst from the United States. He grew up outside Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York with a degree in Economics.
Daniel Ganj
IT Support Lead
Daniel has experience across a range of industries from IT Services to Travel and Financial sector. With good communication skills, consistently builds positive working relationships at all levels within the company and maps business needs into IT operations. Highly flexible, always keen to learn new technologies and apply them to solve business issues/problems.
Richard Glen
Solutions Architect
Richard is a post-trade solutions expert with over 20 years’ experience with leading financial institutions in London and Frankfurt.
Rod Jordan
Head of Business Development
Over 20 years experience delivering innovative software solutions to the financial industry – primarily focusing on Collateral-Management, Clearing & Settlement and Custody. Multiple roles, Project Management, Business & Functional Analysis & Specification, Test Management. Most recently as a Senior Project Manager in the Deutsche Boerse group.
Thibault Manders
Operations Engineer
Thibault has 6 years of experience supporting distributed systems in the banking sector.
Robert Masur
Scrum Master
Robert is a software engineer with 8 years of experience in the banking industry, specifically in settlement and regulatory reporting. He is focused on delivering value to the client through test automation and clean code.
Martin O’Connell
Solutions Architect
Martin has led business and technology change in the Repo and Securities Finance markets for 23 years, originally at UBS and more recently with HSBC.
Olga Poschner
Software Engineer
Olga is an experienced Software Engineer with over 10 years of experience in the information technology and services industry.
Elisa Poutanen
Sales Lead
Elisa has over 20 years of experience in market, financing and collateral management services and has held various sales and business development roles at key market custodians and triparty agents over the years.
Serhiy Serbin
 Software Engineer
Over the last 20 years, Serhiy has shipped various software products in different industries. He likes to contribute to innovative and open-minded start-up teams and is always ready for new challenges.
Dmitry Serdiuk
Software Engineer
Dmitry works with Java and web technologies for 13 years, of which last 9 in financial industry in Switzerland. He is passionate about algorithms and data structures.
Tianyi Shi
Business Development
Tianyi has degrees of law, economics and finance with working experiences in law firm, international bank and investment fund. Most recently as a treasury associate at Blackstone Real Estate.
Nick Short
COO
Nick spent 17 years project managing and building liquidity management technology solutions for Goldman Sachs.
Guido Stroemer
Co-founder, CEO and Chairman
Guido is a financial market veteran with over 25 years of professional work experience in a variety of trading, risk management and senior leadership positions, most recently as global head of repo trading at UBS.
Massimiliano Vaini
Systems Administrator
Massimiliano has gained extensive experience in Italy and Switzerland in the design, installation and management of business-oriented IT technologies, specializing in providing support to users and managing IT infrastructures for companies, especially in the financial market.
Erica De Rosa
Solutions Architect
Erica brings over 10 years' experience in securities finance having worked across trading, strategy, and product development at Morgan Stanley.
Anand Paul
Client Onboarding and Integration Lead
Anand has over 12 years of experience leading Change and Technology management programs across Investment and Retail Banking. Prior joining HQLAᵡ Anand worked at Credit Suisse in Global Markets and Compliance departments. He has a background in engineering and consultancy services and completed his Masters from the London School of Economics.
Angel Martin
DevOps Engineer
Angel has worked with a lot of different technologies over more than 20 years on IT, from Ops in Unix to Devops, Kubernetes and Cloud.
Rebecca Qian Gong
Corporate Development &
Regulatory Affairs Lead
Rebecca has worked 10 years across Asia, Europe & the US, with a track record in venture investing, Fintech and strategic projects.
Solange Umugwaneza
HR & Finance officer
Solange has been working in Human Resources in the financial industry for the past 6 years. She brings her expertise to provide support in various HR function areas and ensure the delivery of people management initiatives and projects.
Federica Gamen
 Legal Counsel (Secondee)
Federica is a secondee from Clifford Chance and is experienced in advising on debt capital markets, and structured finance transactions. Her particular area of focus is the overlap between the FinTech landscape and debt capital markets.