FCA-authorised crypto trading venue BPX announced on Wednesday that ClearBank co-founder and former CEO Charles McManus has joined the firm as an advisor.
McManus stepped down from day-to-day leadership at ClearBank on Tuesday after nine years. He remains on ClearBank’s Group Board and continues as co-chair of the Innovate Finance Unicorn Council.
BPX operates a regulated marketplace for issuing, trading and lending traditional and tokenised alternative assets. The firm is also registered to provide digital custody solutions and offers collateralised lending capabilities.
The appointment is an advisory role, not an executive operating position. BPX is positioning McManus’s experience in building regulated financial plumbing as directly relevant to its own infrastructure build-out for digital securities.
“Charles brings a rare combination of deep banking expertise, fintech innovation experience, and a proven track record of building and scaling regulated financial institutions from the ground up,” said Ali Celiker, Founder and CEO of BPX.
Before co-founding ClearBank in 2015, McManus served as Group CFO of RBS Ulster Bank Group and held roles at Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets, according to a profile in Yahoo Finance UK.
BPX is among a group of firms participating in the joint Bank of England and FCA Digital Securities Sandbox, where it is testing infrastructure to support both traditional and digital assets within a supervised environment.
In practical terms, BPX is trying to build market plumbing for tokenised securities within a regulatory framework, rather than operate as a speculative trading venue. McManus’s appointment follows his experience in building regulated banking infrastructure.
