Capital markets fintech Capitolis has named Murugan Manickam, a longtime Bank of America executive, as its new chief technology officer, effective immediately. The hire continues a year of executive additions at the company.
Manickam will report to president Okan Pekin and take charge of technology for Capitolis’s SaaS optimisation platform and marketplace, along with the company’s data and AI strategy.
Founded in 2017, Capitolis uses algorithmic processing to run multilateral trade compression cycles, identifying and eliminating redundant derivatives positions in FX and equities markets. The company is backed by venture firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, alongside bank investors Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered, and UBS. Over the past year, it has rolled out a new futures porting solution, expanded FX initial margin optimisation, and added straight-through processing to its Novation service.
Manickam specialises in fixed income, currencies, commodities, trade management, regulatory technology, and post-trade platforms. He joins Capitolis after 17 years at Bank of America, where he led large-scale transformation projects across FX, fixed income, credit, rates, and emerging markets, and most recently served as managing director and global head of FICC macro trade management and emerging markets technology. Earlier in his career, he worked at Merrill Lynch and General Reinsurance.
His appointment follows a string of C-suite additions at Capitolis over the past year, including Amol Naik as chief operating officer, Richard Schiffman as chief product officer, and Ashwath Bhat, who joined as chief financial officer at the start of last month.
Herald View: Capitolis is stacking its leadership with big-bank pedigree — a COO from Goldman, a CPO from MarketAxess, now a CTO from Bank of America. That signals a push toward enterprise-grade credibility with its bank-investor base (Citi, JPMorgan, UBS among them) as it scales trade compression into new asset classes.