Cobalt, a post-trade services provider to the foreign exchange (FX) market, announced the appointment of Darren Coote as Managing Director this Monday. Having started his career with Standard Chartered in the early 1980s, Coote has been in the FX industry for over thirty years.
He has already been working with Cobalt for nine months. As Finance Magnates reported earlier in the year, Coote joined the financial technology firm as a Strategic Advisor back in January.
His appointment as a Managing Director to the firm this week comes as Cobalt attempts to expand its business. Currently, more than twenty different institutions, including Citadel Securities and XTX Markets, have signed up to receive its services as and when they go live.
Cobalt - the Real Deal
Founded in 2015 by ex-Traiana CEO Andy Coyne and the founder of Mako, Adrian Patten, Cobalt uses Blockchain to reduce the complexity of the post-trade cycle. Rather than having numerous records for multiple parties, a single, immutable record is created.
Darren Coote - Cobalt's new Managing Director
That, the firm claims, frees up “back and middle office resources from multiple layers of reconciliation.” On top of this, Cobalt’s service manages risk and prepares trades for final settlement.
“Cobalt is a unique solution which solves an urgent need for participants by creating a shared FX post-trade back office utility, significantly reducing risk and cost by 80%.” Said Coote, “I’m excited to play a key role in Cobalt’s development as we prepare to go live this year and reengineer the FX market from the ground up.”
Given the plethora of firms who are, as we speak, desperately shoving the word blockchain into their service offering, Cobalt is something of a breath of fresh air. No vacuous claims of ‘decentralisation’ and no screeching about Bitcoin changing the world.
Instead, the firm actually appears to be putting blockchain technology to practical use. All of the blockchain bullshitters should take note.
