As we celebrate the second anniversary of our non-profit membership network dedicated to transforming environmental, social and governance (ESG) practises within the global markets trading industry, we are delighted to welcome the appointment of three new Members to the Sustainable Trading Board.
Eleni Coldrey, Equinix, Asha Patel, Instinet and Ebrahim Patel, RMB were appointed to the board by members of Sustainable Trading during the organisation’s Annual General Meeting. Each brings to the Board specialist knowledge and insight representing a powerful combination of global markets experience and a commitment to a more sustainable future for the global markets trading industry.
Frank Loughlin, Chairman of the Board, commented “We are delighted to have Eleni, Asha and Ebrahim join our board and look forward to the many contributions they’ll make to Sustainable Trading’s mission. At the same time, we express our sincere gratitude to Clarissa and Lorna for their service as members of the inaugural board. Strong governance is a pillar of our approach and we’ve been fortunate to have such a passionate and dedicated board of directors.”
Eleni Coldrey leads Equinix’s business development in financial services across the EMEA region, focusing on Capital Markets. In this role, she helps Equinix’s financial customers to navigate an industry beset by constant disruption from regulation, new technologies, and unpredictable economic conditions. Her work touches all elements of the trading value chain – exchanges and trading venues, sell- and buy-sides, technology vendors – giving her a real insight into today’s financial markets trends, opportunities and challenges. Eleni is the Equinix lead in Sustainable Trading, leads a workstream in Equinix’s EMEA Sustainability Steering Committee and co-chairs the Sustainable Trading Environmental Working Group focused on Trading Infrastructure. Her strong belief that the future of finance and technology must be sustainable, coupled with her expertise in implementing practical sustainability initiatives, will greatly benefit the Sustainable Trading Board.
Asha Patel is an Executive Director on the Equity Sales Trading desk at Instinet where she spearheads several corporate initiatives including ‘Career Pathways’ which is designed to facilitate engagement between senior and junior team members and to encourage the expansion of business networks and knowledge. Asha is a previous winner of the Nomura “Gender Equity Champion Awards in EMEA” for her positive influence in a male-dominated industry. She also led Instinet’s collaboration with ‘Perfectly Imperfect Prints’, an initiative that provided an opportunity for a young disabled woman to develop graphic designs used by Instinet in internal and external communication campaigns. Asha is also a charity ambassador and regular blogger for ‘Little Lives UK’ a children’s charity supporting disabled and disadvantaged children and young people to help them build stronger futures.
Ebrahim Patel is an investment banker specialising in Financial Innovation, Sustainability, and Islamic Finance. In his role in RMB (Rand Merchant Bank) Markets division he is responsible for Future Markets and Sustainability. With more than 20 years experience in investment banking, 13 in a financial markets and trading environment, Ebrahim is a pioneer of Ethical/Islamic Finance and ESG, and in the past 5 years has chaired a number of RMB’s ESG, Shared Value and Sustainability Working Groups/Forums. He has also led various multi-disciplinary projects and teams looking at the development and application of ESG policies within new product development resulting in several innovations in South African and world-first financial product offerings.
Lorna Boucher, Imperative Execution and Clarissa De’Giorgio, Euronext have stepped down from their Board Member roles after two years, and we would like to thank them both for their steadfast and stalwart support, their hard work getting Sustainable Trading off the ground so successfully, and we look forward to continuing our work together in the months and years to come.