Asset Control Beefs Up Management

Asset Control has hired data management veteran David Hirschfeld as senior vice-president of operations as it prepares to expand its business, officials tell Inside Market Data.

Hirschfeld joined the vendor in New York from Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel Investment Group, where he served as managing director of enterprise data services between August 2002 and March of this year. During his time at Citadel, he was responsible for projects that included the implementation of Asset Control's AC Plus data aggregation and cleansing software (IMD, June 14, 2004).

Hirschfeld's newly-created role is designed to "add a layer of structure and management that has been diffused in the past" between various managers, he says.

But he will also support CEO Ger Rosenkamp as the vendor seeks to expand. Hirschfeld says the vendor now has opportunities to target more specific business areas, such as risk management, where Asset Control's products can help firms comply with regulatory requirements such as Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley.

"Asset Control has focused on [these areas], but it's my job to expand that," he says. "My experience is on the business side of how data is used and how software is used to manage that data. I know how the systems and data are used within a firm."

Hirschfeld also sees opportunities to expand the range and depth of data that AC Plus can support, such as increasing the coverage of reference, price and corporate actions data, as well as making it possible to include more client data in the system.

Another priority is hiring more staff to respond to sales opportunities in the US and the UK. "We need to beef up staff," he says. "Our sales organization is lean and mean… and I'd like to expand it." However, he declines to comment on any specific staffing plans.

At Citadel, Hirschfeld has been replaced by Teja Grewal, former chief technology officer at online advertising monitoring software vendor myGeek. Grewal has also served as vice-president of applications development at ETrade and vice-president of trading systems development at Fidelity Investments. Grewal did not return calls for comment by press time.

Max Bowie