Ex-Cboe CEO Ed Tilly joins $2B fintech Clear Street

Ed Tilly is joining upstart brokerage-services provider Clear Street, as the former head of Cboe Global Markets Inc. takes a new leadership role in the securities industry. 

Tilly starts at Clear Street as president on July 22 to help build the financial technology firm’s brokerage business in the US and abroad, reporting to the board of directors. The move is the next step for Tilly’s career after he resigned in September from running the derivatives and securities exchange following an investigation that determined he didn’t disclose personal relationships with colleagues. He’ll be based in the firm’s New York headquarters. 

The hire also adds to Clear Street’s stable of high-profile talent as the provider of clearing and custody services seeks to expand into new asset classes and geographies. Last year, it poached Cantor Fitzgerald Chief Financial Officer Steve Bisgay to be its own finance chief. It named Goldman Sachs Group Inc. veteran Atul Pawar chief risk officer last month. 

“Ed brings a wealth of experience doing large transactions, product development, and global expansion,” Chief Executive Officer Chris Pento said in an interview. “We’ve had tremendous growth over the last six years, hitting our stride, and we will continue to accelerate.”

During his decade-long run as CEO at Cboe, Tilly more than tripled the company’s share price and boosted its market value from about $2 billion to $18 billion. Tilly started his career as a trader on the floor of Chicago Board Options Exchange in the 80s. As CEO, he oversaw a dealmaking spree that fueled Cboe’s expansion overseas and into the age of electronic trading, offering the fear index, VIX, and zero-day options.

“Working with innovators and problem solvers, that’s what I am used to,” Tilly said. 

Co-founded by Pento in 2018, Clear Street has said it aims to replace “legacy infrastructure used across capital markets” with a prime-brokerage platform that saves clients money and improves efficiency. The idea is to replace Wall Street trading systems from the 70s and 80s with a nimble service that caters to many types of traders and investors in multiple asset classes. 

It offers prime brokerage services to institutional and retail investors including securities financing and lending, clearing and settlement, trading execution, custody, as well as investment banking and trading. Clients include asset managers, hedge funds and family offices that manage assets from $50 million to $50 billion. 

The firm, which raised $685 million at a valuation of $2.1 billion in December, started in equities and has since expanded to options, fixed income and most recently the futures markets. Now, it’s looking to expand beyond the US, taking its market operations to Europe and Asia.

In September, Clear Street tapped Morgan Stanley’s former head of prime brokerage technology, Jon Daplyn, as chief information officer. Expect more hires as well. 

“Our ability to attract talent is much easier than when we started,” Pento said.