London Stock Exchange (LSE) has announced the appointment of Waqas Samad as group director of the Information Services Division and a member of the LSE group’s executive committee.

Samad brings more than 25 years of experience to the exchange. He specializes in the index and portfolio analytics industry and served in various leadership roles for the past 15 years.

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He currently serves as the CEO of Benchmarks at FTSE Russell, a subsidiary of LSE group, where he is responsible for leading the firm’s continued global growth into indexes across all asset classes. He also led the firm while finalizing some of the major deals like the acquisition of Citi Fixed Income Indexes and The Yield Book.

Prior to his role at FTSE Russell, Samad served as the CEO of Barclays Risk Analytics & Index Solutions (BRAIS) for more than eight years. He also held leadership roles at Deutsche Bank, Aspire Technologies, and Credit Suisse.

Commenting on his new role, Samad said: “I’m honored to be asked to lead this important business area for the Group. Mark has built a fantastic franchise in FTSE Russell and it is well positioned to continue to benefit from the underlying global trends driving both passive and active investment management strategies globally. More broadly, the Information Services Division is a great platform and I look forward to further developing the Group’s customer partnership approach and delivering even greater value and analytical insights for our customers.”

Samad will replace Mark Makepeace at the new role. However, Makepeace will remain with the group as a non-executive chairman of the exchange.

“Having been chairman of FTSE in the 1980s and a party to his initial CEO appointment, I can truly say that he [Makepeace] has more than exceeded everyone’s expectations at the time,” said Donald Brydon, the chairman of the LSE.

Makepeace, who hired Samad, said: “Over the past 30 years, the index industry has gone through a period of transformative growth, playing an important role in the investment management process. I’m proud to have developed FTSE from a start-up to a global player active in more than 70 countries.”