Tradeweb appoints Sherry Marcus from AWS as head of AI
Tradeweb Markets Inc. (Nasdaq: TW), a leading, global operator of electronic marketplaces for rates, credit, equities and money markets, today announced the appointment of Sherry Marcus as Head of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
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Building on Tradeweb's strong foundation utilizing AI to enhance price discovery, dealer selection and analytics, Ms. Marcus will lead the next generation of Tradeweb's AI strategy serving more than 3,000 institutional, wholesale, retail advisory and corporate clients around the world. In this newly-created global role, she will report to Tradeweb Chief Technology Officer Justin Peterson.
Ms. Marcus joins Tradeweb from Amazon Web Services, where she led the 300-person science and data team behind Amazon Bedrock, the company's flagship generative AI platform serving hundreds of thousands of enterprise customers. Previously, she was a Managing Director, Data and AI at BlackRock, creating a global AI office and leading the AI Leadership & Transformation team. Prior to this role, Ms. Marcus held various senior positions across financial services, including serving as Chief Data Analytics Officer at Millennium Partners and Global Head, Big Data Analytics at Credit Suisse.
Tradeweb's Chief Technology Officer, Justin Peterson, commented: 'Sherry Marcus is an influential voice on AI and financial markets, and we're excited to welcome her to Tradeweb. With AI continuing to evolve at breakneck speed, Sherry's impressive track record leading strategic, data-driven initiatives at top asset managers will be a strong asset to our team. We look forward to collaborating with her as Tradeweb scales its electronic solutions and continues to innovate with our clients.'
Ms. Marcus serves as Vice President and sits on the board of the MIT Club of New York. She is also on the board of the Allen Brain Institute, the Carnegie Mellon Computational Finance Department and acts as an advisor to the NYC Gen AI Council. Previously, she was a member of the NSA Advisory Board as well as the Science Board at the National Counter Terrorism Center.
Ms. Marcus received her bachelor's in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University and her Ph.D. in Mathematics from MIT.
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Reuters
2 days ago
- Reuters
South Korea says SK and Amazon to invest $5 bln in country's biggest data centre
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Reuters
3 days ago
- Reuters
Breakingviews - Biotech nears cure for Chinese corporate epidemic
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As U.S. lawmakers renew a push, opens new tab to delist all Chinese companies from U.S. exchanges, there's a danger that more shareholders will get short-changed. Sinovac's saga started long before the infectious coronavirus began its deadly, opens new tab spread across the planet. A failed takeover tussle led to a legal brawl to control the boardroom, ultimately prompting Nasdaq officials in February 2019 to stop, opens new tab open buying or selling of shares. The drama at turns involved violence and corporate espionage. The pandemic significantly raised the financial stakes. Because of the trading halt, shareholders were unable to capitalize on the windfall that resulted from Sinovac producing, opens new tab at least 2.9 billion doses of its CoronaVac jab. While rival vaccine maker Moderna's (MRNA.O), opens new tab market value soared to $180 billion, Sinovac shares remained frozen at $6.47, imputing a $460 million market capitalization. The Covid bonanza has left more than $10 billion in cash and short-term investments sitting idle on the company's balance sheet. The stockpile alone is worth more than $140 a share, or 22 times the suspended price. For long-suffering equity owners, a potential resolution is getting tantalizingly closer. A special shareholder meeting next month tees up the culmination of a corporate war that has been raging for nearly a decade, costing millions of dollars for armies of lawyers, accountants, investigators and spin doctors. Two broadly delineated camps lead the campaigns. On one side is Sinovac founder and Chief Executive Weidong Yin, whose 2018 plan to take the company private failed, as did his subsequent attempt to retain oversight of the board. He is backed by Asian buyout firm SAIF Partners, a longtime 15% shareholder, and two other investors, Vivo Capital and Advantech Capital, which hold a combined, but disputed, 16% stake. 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SAIF, the shareholder supporting Yin, has called, opens new tab for a special meeting, opens new tab and nominated, opens new tab 10 directors, including both Yin and Li, representatives from other big shareholders, and ones ousted by the Privy Council's decision. The meeting is scheduled for July 9, originally the same day the dividend, opens new tab was due to be distributed. On Tuesday, Sinovac's board brought forward, opens new tab the payment to July 7, declared a second payout of $19 a share and intentions for a third one as high as $50 per share, taking the total potential outlay to almost $9 billion. Further muddling matters, Sinovac has lost its auditor. Following the January court ruling, opens new tab, Grant Thornton Zhitong told the company, opens new tab it could no longer stand behind years of financial statements and internal controls. As a result, Sinovac missed a deadline to disclose certified 2024 annual results and is scrambling to find a new accountant to comply, opens new tab with Nasdaq listing requirements by July 15. No wonder Sinovac shareholders are anxious. The controversy stretches back to February 2016, when the company accepted Yin's management buyout proposal, opens new tab over a higher bid, opens new tab from a joint venture partner, Shandong Sinobioway Biomedicine, which was backed by Li's 1Global. Before the deal closed, Sinovac held what would turn out to be its last annual general meeting, in February 2018. Sinobioway helped orchestrate a rebellion, encouraging, opens new tab shareholders to attend in person and vote against Yin's board, while a proxy for Li-supporting OrbiMed nominated a new slate of directors at the eleventh hour. When the insurgents won more votes, Sinovac said the ambush was invalid and that its sitting directors had been reelected, opens new tab. As a defensive maneuver, the company also triggered a dilutive poison pill, which was later invalidated by courts. With the election contested, the fight intensified. In April 2018, Sinovac co-founder and Sinobioway Chairman Aihua Pan, and dozens of others, forcibly entered, opens new tab a Beijing facility to steal the company's official seals and seize control, according to court documents, opens new tab and company statements, opens new tab. Sinovac said the intruders left behind incriminating evidence on laptops of the earlier plan to replace the board. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission found, opens new tab that investors had banded together without making the requisite disclosures. 1Globe and Li agreed to pay $290,000 in fines. These feuds, and others involving, opens new tab former Sinovac director and 1Globe executive Pengfei Li, set the scene for the upcoming showdown. Anticipating that Yin's takeover bid lacked the necessary shareholder support, Sinovac terminated it, opens new tab in July 2018. Soon after, it raised $87 million by selling shares to Vivo and Advantech, in a private placement known as a PIPE. The money was supposedly meant to help fund new vaccines, but the company said years later that it had 'not yet been utilized, opens new tab.' A subsequent transaction amplified concerns about Sinovac's relationship with the two investors. In May 2020, as researchers around the world raced to develop a Covid vaccine, the company arranged for its R&D division, Sinovac Life Sciences, to borrow, opens new tab $15 million from the pair as a loan convertible into 7.5% of the unit's equity. The investment, whose necessity and valuation were dubious, would turn out to be extremely rewarding. Sinovac distributed about $2.7 billion in dividends from the start of 2021 through the middle of 2024, most of it to minority backers of its R&D unit. The company says Vivo and Advantech were paid, opens new tab more than $800 million, a return of 50 times their initial investment. All this was prelude to the brutal fight for the remaining cash. The Li clan, which now controls the company, considers the shares sold to Vivo and Advantech void. Cancelling the deal would prevent the two investors from receiving a cut of the dividend and negate their votes at the upcoming shareholder meeting, although Sinovac says it has set aside funds for the duo's portion of the payout, pending litigation. Advantech has asked a federal court in New York to 'preserve the status quo,' while it pursues arbitration rulings in Hong Kong and Beijing. Vivo is suing, opens new tab in Antigua and the United States, alleging that the board and 1Globe are acting illegally. In one of the lawsuits, Vivo accuses Li and his allies of trying to 'loot' Sinovac and says it supports, opens new tab dividends for all. It's a tough case to make, as the investor for years did not publicly press the board to disburse its excess cash more widely. In fact, under Yin's leadership, Sinovac told the SEC two years ago that it had no intention, opens new tab of paying any dividends 'in the near future.' There are reasonable questions to pose about the Li clan's motives and tactics, but the case against Yin's team looks stronger. The ousted chairman and his board selectively paid a fortune to the R&D unit's investors, two of which became significant shareholders after they had backed his ill-fated acquisition of Sinovac, but no one else. If Yin and his supporters regain control on July 9, Sinovac could end up delisted by Nasdaq, leaving shareholders to start another painstaking attempt to get their hands on the cash. It's not the first time that investors in U.S.-listed Chinese companies have been short-changed. In 2016, the chairman of Qihoo 360 led a deal to take the antivirus software developer private by squeezing out minority shareholders at a roughly $9 billion valuation. Two years later, the company relisted, opens new tab in Shanghai at more than $60 billion. In another disputed episode, the chairman of SoftBank-backed RenRen, China's doomed answer to Facebook, unsuccessfully tried to buy, opens new tab the company in 2015 at a 70% discount to its initial public offering price. He later spun off RenRen's valuable investments, including one in online lender SoFi Technologies, into a new outfit he controlled. Minority shareholders sued and ultimately secured a landmark $300 million settlement, opens new tab. As with Sinovac's cross-border jurisdictional mess, a major obstacle for RenRen investors was convincing a judge that New York was the right venue for their lawsuit against a Cayman Islands company with its main operations in China. Sinovac's response to the Advantech lawsuit in New York sums up the sentiment: 'This is an action commenced by a foreign entity, to enjoin a foreign proceeding, in favor of a different foreign proceeding, involving a foreign company, foreign conduct, and the application of foreign law that does not belong in this Court,' it argued this week. Ultimately, this is what gives the Sinovac soap opera broader relevance. A U.S. congressional committee in March identified, opens new tab 286 Chinese companies trading on American exchanges with a total market value of $1.1 trillion. Nearly 50 of them have listed since January 2024. Sinovac's vaccines may have helped prevent millions of deaths, but its cautionary financial tale, if properly absorbed, stands a chance at saving millions of dollars for investors, too. Follow Jeffrey Goldfarb on X, opens new tab and LinkedIn, opens new tab.


The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
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