Exclusive: Venture capitalist Saurabh Sharma joins ETX Capital board
FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned that ETX Capital’s new owners Guru Capital SA have started to reshape the company’s executive suite, beginning with some wholesale changes on the board of directors.
Stepping down from the board of Monecor (London) Limited, the company which operates ETX Capital, are Peter Sugarman and Roger Nagioff. No surprise there, as Mr. Sugarman is COO and a partner of JRJ Group, while Mr. Nagioff is the founding partner of JRJ – JRJ is the investment firm which ceded control to Guru Capital in the M&A deal.
Joining the Monecor/ETX board are Guru Capital partners Ryan Nettles and Luca Merolla. Mr. Nettles was responsible in large part for the success of Swissquote’s retail forex (or what it calls eForex) business, acting as Swissquote’s Director and Head of FX Trading & Market Strategy for nearly a decade before leaving to set up fintech investment firm Guru.
The other additions to the board are fairly interesting.
One new director is Chicago based venture capitalist Saurabh Sharma from VC firm Jump Capital. Mr. Sharma has been a partner at Jump for five years. He has a diverse background in investing, operations and product management and leads Jump’s efforts in Enterprise Software and IT Infrastructure. Prior to joining Jump, Mr. Sharma led various groups at Groupon in product, marketing and operations. Previously, he was an early stage investor at Lightbank, an Investment Banker with Barclays Capital, an algo trader with Lehman Brothers, and was a founding team member of Benchprep, a venture-backed digital learning platform.
Saurabh Sharma started his career as a High-Performance Computing researcher at French National Institute for Scientific Research where he focused on Compiler Optimization for mission-critical computing. He holds a Masters in Computer Science from Cornell University and an MBA from Chicago Booth.
Also re-joining the Monecor/ETX board is former ETX Capital CEO John Wilson.
FNG spoke with Guru Capital’s Ryan Nettles, who explained:
Former ETX Capital Co-CEO John Wilson is joining the Board after serving as a senior leader at the company for a decade. Given John’s familiarity with ETX and his vast industry experience spanning more than four decades, he brings invaluable knowledge to the team.
The second addition to the Board is Saurabh Sharma, a General Partner at Jump Capital, a US based venture capital firm. Saurabh has extensive experience in identifying and scaling technology-driven businesses, including fintech companies at various stages of their evolution.
Simon Bird, the Chairman of the Board and Philip Adler, the CEO of ETX Capital will remain on the Board.
The aforementioned board changes all took effect as of October 6.