ASX Limited has appointed Keir Barnes as chief financial officer, recruiting the finance chief of the listed property group Dexus as part of the most substantial reshaping of its executive leadership team in years.
Barnes succeeds Andrew Tobin, who is retiring. She joins from Dexus, where she was chief financial officer of a group that owns and manages one of the larger Australian commercial property portfolios, and she is a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a member of Chief Executive Women.
The appointment is one of three announced together. Mark Peterson, who ran the New Zealand exchange operator NZX for nine years, joins as managing director of clearing and settlement, and Elaine Vaisanen, formerly head of fund services for Asia Pacific at a global investment bank, becomes chief operating officer.
A new chief executive reshaping the team
All three changes follow the arrival of Anthony Attia as chief executive at the start of September. A slate of senior appointments announced three weeks into a new chief executive's tenure is normally the product of a search that began before the handover, and the breadth of it, covering finance, operations and the clearing and settlement business in one announcement, indicates the board authorised a wide reset rather than incremental change.
The clearing and settlement appointment is the one that carries the most history. ASX abandoned a long-running and expensive programme to replace the ageing system that settles Australian equity trades, a failure that drew regulatory enforcement attention and a public rebuke, and rebuilding that function is the single largest operational commitment the company has. Hiring a former exchange chief executive into the role, rather than a technologist, suggests the company now frames the problem as one of institutional credibility and stakeholder management as much as delivery.
What the finance role involves
Barnes takes on a balance sheet that is unusual for a listed company. A market operator that also runs clearing houses holds regulatory capital against counterparty risk, so the finance function is bound up with the prudential requirements the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission set for financial market infrastructure. That is a different discipline from property, where her recent experience lies, though the capital allocation and investor communication parts of the job carry across directly.
The replacement programme is also the dominant item of capital expenditure, which places the chief financial officer at the centre of the company's most scrutinised decision.
Timing
The changes take effect across the final months of the year, with Tobin remaining through the transition. Dexus has not yet named a successor to Barnes.
