After graduating, in 1985, with an engineering and management degree, from the Special Engineering Programme at Brunel University, Kevin joined KPMG, as a audit trainee and then as a consultant, Kevin spent 4 years working on various assignments ranging from the privy purse audit at Sandringham to designing and coding an interest rate swaps (IRS) valuation system.
Leaving KPMG in 1989 Kevin worked as a self employed IT consultant for 2 years and then as part of a team that acquired the magnetic separation business of Cryogenic Consultants Limited from receivership. This business was put on a sound footing and a majority shareholding was sold to an American investor (Carpco Inc). Kevin then worked as joint managing director on business strategy, general and financial management and line reporting into the US parent company. The company was eventually acquired by Outokumpu http://www.outokumpu.com/.
In 1996 Kevin joined, as a part-time consultant, Robert Fleming, looking at emerging technologies for the group from either an investment or usage perspective. As part of this period Kevin looked at FIX (Financial Information Exchange) as a possible candidate for use within the firm. Having concluded that FIX was a useful piece of technology for Robert Fleming Asset Management but FIX engines where, at the time, little more than expensive parsing software Kevin then wrote a FIX engine. Robert Flemings gave this FIX engine away as a tool to help others learn about FIX.
In 1999, on the acquisition of Fleming by Chase Manhattan Bank, Kevin joined the recently formed European Equity Electronic Trading team at Salomon Brothers. Over the next 6 years this team grew into a large electronic trading operation. After co heading this team, Kevin remained a consultant to Citigroup until 2005. In 2005 Kevin moved to HSBC were he worked advising electronic trading teams across the group.
Kevin has been involved in FIX since 1997. Kevin has written a FIX engine and order management system, co-authored, the FIX.4.2 program trading messages, the FIX.4.4 XML DTD, the FIX.4.4 XML Schema http://www.fixprotocol.org/specifications/fix4.4fixml, developed the FIX Repository. http://www.fixprotocol.org/specifications/repository. Kevin was a member of the Global Steering Committee and co-Chair of the Global Technical Committee until 2013.
Kevin is Chairman of Rapid Addition and produces high level designs for their products and provides strategic direction to the business. http://www.rapidaddition.com. Products Kevin has been involved in developing include Rapid Addition FIX Shortcut for BizTalk, Rapid Addition Generation Zero libary for low latency messaging in managed languages, and Rapid Addition FPGA based general purpose FIX engine.
Kevin has worked for Citigroup, HSBC, Thomson Reuters, NYSE, London Stock Exchange Group, SWX and other clients as a part-time consultant. Assignments have included reviews of strategy, running acquisitions, creation of products and services, technical due diligence for acquisitions, technical arbitration as part of dispute resolution, and assessment of opportunities arising out of market conditions and new regulation, and of course the inevitable technical assignments around FIX.
Most recently Kevin was a member of the Lead Expert Group for the UK Government Foresight Report into the Future of Computer Based Trading. http://www.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/published-projects/computer-trading. Kevin continues to be involved in the follow up activity for this project.
Kevin is available as a freelance consultant and can be contacted on by emailing him as kevinh (KEVINH) at this website domain (ALTKB.COM).
This page was last updated 06/09/2013