John Crompton, HSBC’s former global head of corporate finance, has been named chairman of the advisory board at FinTech Issufy, which sells an electronic data management tool so banks can collect investor feedback online, as well as handle tasks such as the allocation of shares.
The Financial News reported news that John Crompton spent more than 20 years with Morgan Stanley in roles across London, New York and Hong Kong, including co-head of ECM for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He then ran Merrill Lynch’s EMEA ECM business for a year from 2007 and spent two years as head of market investments at UK Financial Investments before spending six years with HSBC. Crompton’s time there included stints as head of equity capital markets and, more recently, head of corporate finance. He left in June 2016 due to an overhaul of the bank’s global banking unit.
Crompton isn’t the only former HSBC banker to transition into the FinTech industry: Spencer Lake, who had been one of the banking firm’s most senior capital finance executives, now holds advisory roles with several technology firms, and Ben Leonard, who was co-head of HSBC’s financial institutions group in the U.K., is now running an advisory firm that helps startups and banks build relationships.
Crompton will help London-based Issufy, founded in 2016, develop its product, as well as introduce it to industry contacts.
“I’m a great fan of the IPO process as a way of getting to a decent outcome for issuers and investors,” said Crompton. “But there are ways it could be improved, principally related to gathering and acting upon information to inform decisions around marketing and price range setting. This can be made much more efficient by bringing more of it online.”
Other advisers to Issufy include Brian Collings, founder and chief executive of FinTech company Torstone Technology; Patrick Garrett, a former managing director in Wells Fargo Securities’ equity capital markets unit and Jonathan Shaw, an ex-Barclays trader who was more recently CEO of data provider SGDA.