Thomas Chippas

Tom Chippas Occupation Chief Executive Officer Employer Rothera Location New York LinkedIn Profile Website https://www.rothera.io/ Thomas Chippas is a financial markets executive who serves as chief executive officer of Rothera, an intermediary and institutional-focused derivatives exchange and clearinghouse for event contracts, and is known for senior roles in electronic trading, digital assets, and derivatives market infrastructure at banks, trading firms, and exchanges. Background Early Career in Technology and Trading services In the early part of his career, Chippas worked in technology and trading services serving banks and other financial institutions, including roles at the Macgregor Group and Financial Technologies International (FTI). In those positions he focused on order management and data platforms used by asset managers and institutional investors as electronic trading and straight-through processing gained adoption in the equity and bond markets, supporting clients as they adapted to higher average daily volume and more complex contract specifications in global markets. His responsibilities included sales and account management for portfolio and trading systems, working with buy-side firms that required reliable connectivity to multiple execution venues and banks as electronic trading displaced manual order routing and voice-based price discovery. Deutsche Bank and Bank of America Chippas later joined Bank of America as a principal overseeing aspects of its electronic equities platform, and then Deutsche Bank, where he became managing director of Autobahn Equity North America, the bank’s electronic trading service for equities. In those roles he was involved in building and operating low-latency infrastructure that supported algorithmic execution, smart order routing, and risk controls for institutional clients in an environment shaped by Regulation NMS in the United States and similar market structure reforms abroad, which emphasized time/price priority and match engine performance as determinants of liquidity and execution quality. His work contributed to the banks’ ability to service proprietary trading firms and asset managers with direct market access and algorithmic strategies, as average daily volume and open interest in global equities and related futures and options increased and clients demanded more sophisticated analytics such as VWAP benchmarks and execution quality metrics. Barclays and Citadel Technology Chippas moved to Barclays as managing director and global head of quantitative prime services, where he oversaw a business providing financing, execution, and risk management services to systematic hedge funds and other quantitative clients. In that role he worked with proprietary trading firms and asset managers that relied on electronic trading and derivatives including equity futures, equity options, and equity swaps for hedging and leverage, at a time when post-crisis regulation was reshaping capital and margin requirements for banks and swap dealers. He subsequently became chief executive officer of Citadel Technology, a unit affiliated with Citadel that provided technology and services to institutional investors and trading firms. At Citadel Technology he was responsible for delivering trading, risk management, and portfolio systems to external clients at a time when hedge funds and asset managers increasingly sought to outsource or license technology to meet regulatory reporting, settlement, and custody requirements in multi-asset portfolios spanning futures, options, swaps, and cash securities. Axoni and Citi In 2016, Chippas joined Axoni, a New York-based capital markets technology firm focused on distributed ledger infrastructure, as chief operating officer. His responsibilities included refining Axoni’s product and service capabilities, scaling its organization, and expanding client and commercial engagements related to blockchain deployments, large-scale data management, smart contracts, and connectivity tools for banks, central counterparties, and other market participants in derivatives and securities markets. This work took place as market participants explored distributed ledger technology for post-trade settlement, collateral management, and reference data, and as regulators evaluated its potential impact on risk management and the role of central counterparties. In 2017, Citi hired Chippas from Axoni as managing director and global head of quantitative execution, a role focused on strengthening the bank’s electronic execution offering ahead of MiFID II implementation in Europe. Based in New York, he was responsible for expanding the global footprint of Citi’s low-latency execution platform, reporting to the global head of prime finance and the global head of cash trading, and working with a client base that included asset managers, proprietary trading firms, and other institutional investors seeking algorithmic and direct market access services in cash equities and related futures and options markets. ErisX and Cboe Digital Chippas became chief executive officer of ErisX, a U.S.-based digital asset exchange and clearinghouse that offered spot cryptocurrency trading and futures on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Under his leadership ErisX obtained a designated contract market (DCM) license and a derivatives clearing organization (DCO) license from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, allowing it to list and clear physically delivered futures contracts and provide central counterparties services tailored to digital assets, as market participants sought regulated venues for cash-settled and physically delivered products in a sector that had largely developed on unregulated platforms. During this period ErisX announced partnerships with trading firms such as DRW and Virtu, as well as intermediaries serving institutional investors, to support liquidity provision and market access for clients interested in cryptocurrency futures and spot trading. In October 2021, Cboe Global Markets (Cboe) agreed to acquire ErisX, and the platform was rebranded as Cboe Digital, an integrated spot and derivatives marketplace for digital assets. Following the acquisition, Chippas served as chief executive officer of Cboe Digital and sat on its board of directors, overseeing the integration of digital asset trading and clearing into a broader exchange group that operated cash equity, options, and futures markets, at a time when regulators scrutinized custody models, market manipulation risks, and risk management frameworks for cryptocurrencies. Argo Blockchain and TS Imagine In November 2023, Argo Blockchain, a London-listed bitcoin mining company, appointed Chippas as chief executive officer and a member of its board of directors. Argo cited his experience in capital markets and digital assets, including his prior role as chief executive officer of Cboe Digital, as relevant to the company’s strategy in the bitcoin mining sector at a time when miners were responding to protocol halvings, changing liquidity conditions, and evolving regulatory expectations around energy use and financing structures. In January 2025, Argo announced that he would step down from his positions as chief executive officer and director effective 28 February 2025, and named the firm’s chief financial officer as interim chief executive officer. Chippas also serves as a non-executive director of TS Imagine, a provider of trading and risk management technology to asset managers, banks, proprietary trading firms, and other institutional investors. TS Imagine has highlighted his nearly 30 years of experience at banks and financial technology firms, including roles at Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Citi, and ErisX, as relevant to its focus on derivatives markets, multi-asset risk management, and technology for central counterparties and other market participants. Rothera Chippas is the chief executive officer of Rothera, an intermediary and institution-focused derivatives exchange and clearinghouse for event contracts. Rothera is described as a venue “purpose-built for event contracts,” which are designed to transfer risk on discrete outcomes such as economic releases or policy decisions and which can complement traditional futures and options markets by offering additional channels for price discovery and hedging around binary or path-dependent events. In this role, Chippas works at the intersection of electronic trading, derivatives market structure, and regulatory policy, as event contracts and prediction markets attract scrutiny from regulators and central counterparties because of their contract specifications, settlement mechanisms, and potential uses by institutional investors and proprietary trading firms. Education Chippas earned a bachelor of science degree in accountancy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, providing a foundation in financial reporting, auditing, and corporate finance that underpinned his later work in trading, risk management, and financial technology for banks and market infrastructure providers. References

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