BondDesk Chairman Howard Edelstein Adds CEO Role as Part of Management Realignment

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Board of Directors of BondDesk Group LLC announced today that longtime financial technology leader and innovator Howard Edelstein will become the company’s CEO, effective immediately. Edelstein, an Operating Partner at Advent International Corporation, a major BondDesk investor, will assume the CEO position while maintaining his current role as Chairman. As CEO, Edelstein replaces Kim Bang, who will leave the company.

“BondDesk has all the ingredients required to drive an industry transformation: a strong, experienced leadership team, disruptive technology, and a commanding market position in a business – bond trading – that is ripe for change.”

Edelstein’s expanded role at BondDesk is part of an overall realignment of the company’s operations around its two major business lines. The company also announced that Craig Pfeiffer, a 30-year wealth management veteran and former Vice Chairman at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, will lead the company’s efforts focused on the wealth management community. Pfeiffer’s appointment comes on the heels of the hiring of John Bagley, an industry veteran with more than 25 years of retail bond sales and trading experience at UBS, to direct the company’s Capital Markets/ATS business. As BondDesk CEO, Edelstein will be able to draw on the expertise of a strong and highly focused leadership team with extensive hands-on experience in the retail wealth management arena.

"We continue to see significant growth ahead in electronic fixed income trading and BondDesk is well positioned to help its clients capitalize on this opportunity,” said Chris Egan, Managing Director, Advent International Corporation and a BondDesk Director. “Howard Edelstein has been Chairman of BondDesk for more than two years and has a great understanding of BondDesk’s clients and their needs. Howard’s track record and experience in financial technology and market structure, combined with the addition of wealth management industry veterans Craig Pfeiffer and John Bagley, makes BondDesk uniquely qualified to help its clients navigate a rapidly evolving fixed income trading environment.”

In the mid-1990s while CEO of Thomson Financial ESG, Edelstein began a 6-year crusade that led to the overturning of a New York Stock Exchange rule that prevented commercial entities such as Thomson from offering U.S. trade confirmation services, then orchestrated a merger with the post-trade communications business of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. to create Omgeo, now the industry standard global utility for post-trade processing. Next, Edelstein played a key role in moving the financial industry to embrace cloud-based services as CEO of Radianz, now the financial network services division of BT. Later, Edelstein led a turnaround at financial technology provider NYFIX, Inc. after delays in filing financial statements had caused the company to lose its NASDAQ listing.

Edelstein has been the recipient of several “Industry Top 10 Innovator Awards” and in 2010 was named one of the “Legends” in the financial securities services industry over the past 20 years by Asset International.

“I am very excited about the opportunity to lead this company at a time of tremendous change and innovation in its sector,” said Edelstein. “BondDesk has all the ingredients required to drive an industry transformation: a strong, experienced leadership team, disruptive technology, and a commanding market position in a business – bond trading – that is ripe for change.”

About BondDesk

BondDesk Group LLC is a leading financial technology company providing innovative, enterprise-wide fixed income solutions to a community of over 2,000 investment firms, including many of the top broker-dealers in North America. BondDesk’s workstation solutions, including its flagship BondWorks™ Wealth Management Platform, enable over 105,000 financial advisors and asset managers to trade bonds with confidence, manage client portfolios and attract new assets. The company’s industry-leading advisor workstation, price transparency, portfolio management and compliance solutions empower wealth managers to better service the needs of the investing public. BondWorks is the first financial services solution to win the highly coveted “Best Application Design” award from the Nielsen Norman Group (NNG), one of the world’s leading design and usability research and consultancy firms.

In addition, the BondDesk Alternative Trading System (ATS), operated by BondDesk Trading LLC, member FINRA and SIPC, provides the BondDesk community with access to an aggregated pool of over 120,000 daily live offerings of odd-lot fixed income securities in a broad range of asset classes. The BondDesk Trading ATS executes over 20,000 transactions per day with high fill ratios and price quality.

BondDesk Trading LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BondDesk Group LLC.

To learn more, visit www.bonddeskgroup.com, and follow @BondDesk on Twitter.

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