Our Team | html

Bill Jacobs

CEO and Co-Founder

A young Bill Jacobs was hoping to become a fighter pilot, racing car driver or an All Black but instead started his career as an interbank spot foreign exchange broker in his native New Zealand before moving to London where he landed a role as a currency options trader first at Chase Manhattan and later at Credit Suisse. This was followed by roles at Dresdner Bank, which saw him move to Singapore to take charge of the currency options operations for Asia before moving back to London as Dresdner’s Global Co-head of Currency Options. From there Bill co-headed up the global Options desk at Barclays Capital where he was instrumental in developing the award winning BARX platform. As well as running Grandegoldens he can be found indulging his passion for aviation and regularly running out of meetings to point out helicopters.

Alexander Wayne

Co-Founder & Head of Marketing

Being stubborn, bossy, creative and controlling are all the traits of a leader, Alex assures us. His career started in e-FX at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein where he was responsible for selling the online trading platform Piranha throughout Europe. This was followed by a move to Barclays Capital where he was given responsibility for European Institutional e-FX clients and later for recruiting and heading a new team of sales professionals to promote BARX, Barclay's e-FX trading platform, to European Institutional Banks and Hedge funds. He is passionate about good design and can often be found obsessing over typography and paper quality.

James Coulter -

Chief Technology Officer

James is a Burrito-hunting and undercover geek. Since acquiring his first computer at the tender age of five, he has rarely been seen without some sort of gadget at his fingertips. After completing a degree in Computing at Imperial College London he ventured to the University of Manchester to seek a change of student life, and to complete a masters in Advanced Computer Science. His technology career spans 14 years taking in a diverse range of industries ranging from vehicle telematics to call centre administration systems, however the last 8 years have been focused on the unique challenges of electronic trading. James was part of the team behind Lehman Brothers' award-winning FXLive platform. Post the infamous collapse he moved to the trading floor to join the team developing the hedging/pricing/analytics technology behind Barclays Capital’s BARX platform (one of the top-three FX single-dealer platforms).

Simon Park -

Head of Developement amd Risk Management

Simon is our resident ski bunny, loves a good Central Otago Pinot Noir and is very handy with a tennis racket. He is certainly not to be messed with in a buffet race and has bankrupted many a local eatery. Simon’s career began at National Bank of NZ where he started working in FX Institutional sales before moving to a sales/trading role in the latter part of his employments at NBNZ. During his time there, he also managed their vanilla style option book. He then moved to Dresdner Kleinwort, where he worked in a market making/trading capacity on the spot desk before seeing the light and leaving for a break from the markets in 2007. His FX trading experience has been G10 currencies with a focus on commodity currencies. Simon heads up Product Development and Testing at Grandegoldens.

Nicole Wiseman -

Compliance & Finance Manager

Nicole love of all things that glitter, she is Manager of the Grandegoldens legal, compliance and finance teams. When she isn’t dragging her colleagues for PB runs round Hagley Park or leading boot camps in the boardroom she plays Mum to two little girls at home and the boys in the office at work. Nicole has a double degree in law and accounting, is a qualified barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand and a Chartered Accountant. Nicole began her career in the corporate tax team at Ernst & Young in New Zealand before moving to London for five years and working for JPMorgan Chase and AXA Corporate Solutions in their tax, compliance and finance teams. Upon her return to New Zealand, Nicole returned to Ernst & Young before moving to Infiniti Capital Markets, embarking on motherhood and finally joining the team at Grandegoldens.

Paul Pugsley -

Chief Operational Officer

We are pleased to announce that this man - Paul’s jobs is to ensures that everything we do is safe and legal. Having spent twelve years climbing the Ladder of Importance at Ernst & Young, Paul jumped ship to Grandegoldens and since then hasn’t failed to astound us with his tax, legal, finance and capital markets knowledge. He can usually be found uttering his favourite phrase, “computer says no.” as he repeatedly prevents us from misbehaving, and keeps us on the straight and narrow as best he can. With his dapper sense of style, Paul saunters into the office every morning safe in the knowledge that in one fell swoop. This competitiveness is something Paul never leaves at home whatever the occasion, so rest assured that we couldn’t find anyone as good as Paul at what he does – he is literally better than everyone.

Justin Furness -

Marketing Analysist

Justin’s first real interest in currencies sparks from when he was rushing to his bank during lunch, debit card clutched in hand, to buy as many Deutsche Marks as were available. The year was 1992, just a couple of days before Britain was unceremoniously booted out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) – the precursor to the Euro. However, despite the bank’s lousy retail exchange rates, the trade was profitable, such was the magnitude of GBP’s crash - a certain Mr Soros reportedly made $1 billion on his trade. Inspired by this experience, Justin began working for a number of media organisations, covering markets including The Wall Street Journal and Thomson Reuters. Also on this impressive list is consultancy work for a boutique investment bank in the City of London, and the UN-mandated Common Fund for Commodities. On the rare occasions when he is not thinking about markets and the economy, Justin enjoys sampling English ales, watching Spaghetti Westerns and eating curry - preferably all at the same time.

Our Team

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