As 2024 kicks off, SRP looks back at the most relevant people moves in the structured product industry in the past year. Today we focus on the comings and goings at Leonteq Securities.

Antoine Boublil has just taken the role of chief financial officer (CFO) and member of the executive committee at the Swiss structured product provider. He succeeds Marco Amato (right), who stepped down in August 2023. Hans Widler, head of financial management since 2015, acted as CFO ad interim from 1 September 2023.

Amato joined Leonteq as CFO in September 2016, and additionally served as chief risk officer between November 2016 and October 2017. In October 2017, he was appointed CEO ad interim replacing Jan Schoch who left the company following a €20m net loss in January 2017.

Amato’s departure coincided with the exit of Thomas Glaus, head of central compliance and are understood to be linked to the potential tax evasion and money laundering claims by third parties concerning two Leonteq issued products distributed by a company based in the British Virgin Islands.

Boublil was tasked as CFO of Credit Suisse (Schweiz) from 2016 and served as chairman of the board of directors of Bank Now, a fully-owned subsidiary of Credit Suisse and as chairman of the board of managing officers of Swisscard AECS GmbH, a credit card company owned by Credit Suisse and American Express.

In April 2023, Leonteq welcomed Anouch Wilhelms (right) as head of public distribution for Germany and Austria based in Frankfurt. He reports to Michael Seifried, head of retail flow business. The appointment was part of Leonteq’s build-up in Germany where it has hired a team to drive the new retail flow business.

Wilhelms joined from Société Générale’s corporate and investment banking (SGCIB) where he was director, derivatives, head of public distribution media. He was part of a group of executives that transferred to the French bank following the acquisition of Commerzbank’s equity markets & commodities business.

Last March, Thorsten Heidt (right) became managing director at Leonteq’s  Frankfurt office and began to co-run the bank’s business in the European Union where the Swiss provider has branches in Paris, Lisbon, London and Milan.

Heidt returned to the industry after a 12-month break following his departure from Société Générale in December 2021. He was also among the group who transferred to the French bank from Commerzbank due to the acquisition.

At the German bank where he joined in 1997, Heidt was most recently head of corporate & institutional sales in equity markets & commodities for the Dach region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) since 2016 after his relocation from Hong Kong SAR where he was managing director and head of equity markets & commodities for Asia.

In February 2023, Leonteq named Alexandre van Gasselt (right) as head of markets who reports to chief executive officer (CEO) Lukas Ruflin.

In his new role, Van Gasselt oversees exotics trading, retail flow business, as well as delta-one, actively managed certificates (AMC), funds and quantitative investment strategies (QIS) trading activities. Previously, he was managing director, co-head of trading at the Swiss structured product specialist.

Van Gasselt joined Leonteq in 2019 from Société Générale where he was a managing director. Prior to that, he spent 14 years at Commerzbank in various roles, including co-head structured products technology, covering the financial engineering and front office infrastructure teams, and head of equity indices and cross assets structured products trading.