Thomson Reuters has appointed Shanker Ramamurthy as president, sales and trading for Thomson Reuters Markets, effective 20 June 2011. Based in New York, he will oversee the delivery of information, news, collaboration and transaction services to trading professionals.
Thomson Reuters' sales and trading division is the firm's largest financial business, serving customers in the foreign exchange, fixed income, equities, commodities and energy markets. Other businesses with the Thomson Reuters Market division include Eikon, the firm's financial desktop and mobile platform.
Ramamurthy joins Thomson Reuters from technology company IBM, where he was most recently general manager for its global banking and financial markets business. Before that, he had global responsibility for IBM's banking and financial markets global business services business. Prior to joining IBM, Ramamurthy was a lead partner for account firm PricewaterhouseCoopers' financial services strategic consulting service.
Thomson Reuters has stated it intends to increase its participation in electronic trading marketplaces. As part of the gradual expansion of the firm's sales and trading business, Bill Harts also joins the company as head of strategy for sales and trading, reporting to Ramamurthy. Harts developed his expertise in electronic and algorithmic trading at firms including Nasdaq and Citigroup.
The Thomson Reuters sales and trading workforce currently consists of 2,700 employees globally, producing revenues of US$3.5 billion in 2010. Thomson Reuters formed a strategic relationship with technology provider StreamBase to deliver complex event processing technology over Elektron, the firm's high-performance global network, in May 2011.