CLSA said on Tuesday that it has named Richard ‘Rick’ Gould as chief executive officer, replacing Jonathan Slone who quit last month, as Citic Securities asserts tighter control over the Hong Kong-based brokerage it bought in 2013.
Gould, who currently serves as CEO of CLSA Americas, will oversee the firm’s global strategy and operations. He brings a 30-year track record of developing and marketing leading products and services in the financial services industry, principally at Morgan Stanley and Bloomberg.
Gould joined CLSA in 2014 and will relocate from New York to Hong Kong.
“His experience in building high-performing teams and in growing international businesses will be critical to accelerate our strategy to build a leading Chinese global investment bank,” said CLSA chairman Youjun Zhang in a statement. Zhang has personally been taking responsibility for greater oversight of the brokerage, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Slone had been CEO for about a decade and helped engineer Citic Securities’ takeover of the brokerage. One hot favourite to take over from Slone had been his chief operating officer Nigel Beattie, but he too resigned followed by global head of sales execution and trading Xen Gladstone and global head of research Edmond Bradely.
In 2018, the bonus pool across Citic Securities dropped between 50% to 60%, some of the executive committee members received zero bonus.
The exodus among senior management made room for a raft of promotions including Andrew Hartley as group head of equity sales, trading and execution. A 20-year CLSA veteran, Hartley will continue to serve as country head of Singapore (a role he has held since 2005) in addition to his new responsibilities.
CLSA has also promoted Shaun Cochran to group head of research. At CLSA for 14 years, Cochran was most recently global head of thematic research, previously country head of Korea, and led the Korean research business from 2007 to 2014.
Andrew Norman has been appointed CEO of CLSA Australia to oversee the Australian capital markets and corporate finance business in addition to equities. A 30-year industry veteran, Norman joined CLSA in 2014.
