Joseph Reynolds

Chief Operating Officer & Chief Compliance Officer

London, UK joe@jjoe.co

Profile

I serve as COO and CCO for a multi-jurisdiction investment manager, overseeing three FCA Senior Management Functions: SMF3 (Executive Director), SMF16 (Compliance Oversight), and SMF17 (MLRO). As a senior leader, I provide institutional-level operations, compliance, and technology to founder-led and growing financial services firms, with a proven, practical background in IT development.

Serving on the Executive Committee of an investment manager, reporting directly to the CEO. I was responsible for operations, the regulatory control framework, technology, and facilities, overseeing a peak of $3.4bn in assets across Cayman funds and SMAs. Previously, I worked as a Partner for Operations, Head of Operations, and software developer and IT leader, developing and managing platforms and systems using a wide range of technologies. My regulatory knowledge spans the UK, the EU, the US, the Cayman Islands, and Hong Kong/Greater China.

My experience is asset-class-agnostic, supporting strategies and functions on both the buy and sell sides, including trading in equities, swaps, derivatives, rates, and fixed income across global markets.

Core Expertise

  • Chief Operating Officer
  • Chief Compliance Officer
  • Head of Operations
  • SMCR Senior Management Functions (SMF3 / SMF16 / SMF17)
  • MLRO
  • regulatory compliance
  • technology leadership
  • fund operations
  • trade lifecycle
  • settlements
  • reconciliations
  • enterprise AI implementation
  • NAV oversight
  • operational due diligence
  • DDQ
  • custodian & prime broker management
  • OMS/EMS
  • BCP/DR
  • transaction reporting
  • platform build-out
  • systems governance
  • cyber-security
  • InfoSec
  • vendor selection
  • KPI & SLA frameworks
  • MI systems
  • office and infrastructure management

Experience

Chief Operating Officer & Chief Compliance Officer

Cederberg Capital Limited — London, Shanghai, Hong Kong 2019–present

I oversee FCA, SEC, and SFC-regulated investment and sub-investment managers for Greater China and emerging-markets strategies. I report to the CEO and serve on the Executive Committee. I’m responsible for operations, compliance, risk, technology, and facilities for the firm. I hold SMF3, SMF16 and SMF17 at the FCA, and the MIC for Operations and Compliance at the SFC; SEC Access Person.

  • Alongside the CFO, I built and led the establishment and launch of Cederberg Capital Asia Limited, a Hong Kong investment manager, securing the SFC Type 9 (asset management) licence; entity, regulatory permissions, operating platform, and local control framework from a standing start
  • Managed SEC and SFC approvals as part of regulatory oversight spanning four jurisdictions, including two RIA applications and the SFC Type 9 licence. Built and ran the compliance control framework — procedures, monitoring, reporting, and regulatory references covering the UK, US, Cayman and Hong Kong/Greater China.
  • Full build-out and delivery of new London head office end-to-end — on time and on budget.
  • Owned the full trade lifecycle across cash equities, swaps and derivatives (US/EU/Asia/EM). This covered new product and market support, pre-trade, execution, settlements, reconciliations, NAV oversight, monitoring and reporting. With a focus on efficient and scalable operations, executed multiple custodians, PB, and counterparty onboarding and offboarding, as well as Fund Admin transitions, for an increasingly institutional investor base.
  • Relationship management with core vendors and counterparties. Establishing and monitoring SLAs and service delivery, including commercial and term negotiations and regular to-market reviews.
  • Responsible for firm-wide technology end-to-end. Systems governance, vendor and platform selection, enterprise AI implementation, cybersecurity, infrastructure, market and reference data architecture, OMS support, in-house development release cycles, and BCP/DR. Designated Data Protection Officer.
  • Served on the Executive Committee, overseeing firm strategy across all areas including hiring, HR and team culture. Responsible for multiple functional operating budgets with full cost accountability.
  • Partnered with the CFO and IR team on fund management and client-facing delivery; investor presentations, marketing materials, due diligence requests and DDQ documentation, and ad hoc investor and consultant queries.

Partner, Head of Operations

Prism Financial Partners LLP — London & New York 2015–2019

Order-handling brokerage and trading analytics platform startup, specialising in exchange-traded derivatives (primarily rates) for large buy-side clients. Reporting to the CEO; member of the senior management team during a period of exceptional growth.

  • Designed, built, implemented and ran a fully bespoke and greenfield automated reconciliation and MI reporting engine on a largely open-source production stack — pre- and post-execution, order handling, intraday and T+1 trade and position matching, settlement and finance — owning it end-to-end through the firm’s rapid growth.
  • Owned the Prism Group technology platform (excluding front-end analytics development): infrastructure platform, outsourced support services, market and external connectivity, trading networks, data architecture, software release and upgrade cycles, BCP/DR, and systems and vendor governance.
  • Ran all operational aspects of the brokerage — reconciliations, client reporting, billing and invoicing — and, with the CCO and consultants, built out compliance and regulatory control frameworks including GDPR and full MiFID II / MiFIR readiness.
  • Built and led the team through rapid growth as a Partner and senior-management-team member: standardised hiring, performance metrics, appraisal and remuneration policy, revenue attribution, and an internship and social-mobility programme.
  • Drove business development of the firm’s proprietary analytics platform to a successful beta launch, working across sales, trading, quant and IT development in an Agile environment.

Operations, Operational Control & Compliance (Contract)

Duet Group — London & MENA 2015

Multi-strategy fund manager; commodities and long-only equities.

  • Temporary contract role focused on delivery of process improvement, automation and control-procedure implementation across operations, fund accounting and compliance; implemented the Albourne OPERA reporting framework end-to-end, from specification to production.
  • Project-managed external operational due diligence visits, coordinating IR, risk, legal and operations.

Head of Operations

Mako Group — London 2011–2014

Core function owner within a central-services model. Ownership of full in-house back and middle office plus the operations technology platform, supporting investment managers across HFT, systematic, market-making, proprietary and sales trading.

  • Ran multiple teams delivering all information from point-of-execution on. This included fund administration, settlements, lending, brokerage, portfolio and trade reconciliations, cash and treasury management, EMIR/MiFID transaction reporting, tax payments and asset servicing.
  • Owned the build and support of a proprietary platform for the ingestion, normalisation, reconciliation and onward processing of market, trading and reference data across all traded asset classes, feeding global front-office, risk and back-office systems.
  • Matrix-managed teams across time zones. Led hiring, development, succession planning and remuneration.

Earlier — Mako Group & Xansa PLC

1998–2011

  • Head of Backoffice / Operations IT, Mako Group (2007–2011). Responsible for building and leading a developer and analyst team across time zones; designed and architected the operational technology and reference-data platform (Solaris/Linux, Oracle, Java, PL/SQL).
  • Backoffice Software Developer, Mako Group (2000–2006) and Analyst Programmer, Xansa PLC (1998–2000): production software development, systems architecture and database management.

Education

MA Philosophy (Cantab), 2.1 — Selwyn College, University of Cambridge 1995–1998

A-Levels: Art, English, History (grade A) — Beacon Community College 1993–1995

Qualifications & Technology

Regulatory & financial

  • Series 32 — Limited Futures Examination (NFA)
  • MiFID II Transaction Reporting Foundation (LSEG)
  • EMIR Transaction Reporting Foundation, Distinction (LSEG)
  • MiFID Transaction Reporting Foundation (LSEG)

Technology

  • Oracle Certified Professional, Advanced PL/SQL Developer
  • Oracle Certified Associate, Oracle Database 11g Administrator
  • AI implementation & integration
  • Full-stack development experience building and improving production platforms and systems within financial markets
  • data management
  • systems architecture
  • DevOps, Agile/Scrum and CI/CD
  • languages and vendors includes Oracle, Python, PL/SQL, Java, C#, SQL Server, Postgres, KDB and JavaScript frameworks

Asset classes

  • Equities and equity derivatives, rates, fixed income, commodities, ETFs — cash, on-exchange and OTC, across global markets. Strategies covered include Equity (L/S, Long-Only), Fixed Income RV, HFT, Global Macro, Commodities, Delta One, FX Liquidity across funds, SMAs, proprietary, market-making, execution, and sales desks.