As part of the apparent exodus of Wall Street talent to the crypto sphere, a hedge fund exec has left to join Coinbase as new CFO.
The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at Wall Street’s Och-Ziff Captial Management (Oz Management) has left to become the new CFO at major crypto wallet and exchange service Coinbase, according to Coinbase’s blog post published yesterday, April 17.
Alesia Haas has worked at Oz Management for a year and a half, previously working in executive roles at OneWest Bank and Merrill Lynch. Coinbase President and COO Asiff Hirji wrote in the company’s blog post that Haas will begin at Coinbase immediately, but will also stay on at Oz Management for the transitional period until June 1, 2018.
Brian Armstrong, the CEO and founder of Coinbase, said in the announcement post that he is “incredibly excited to have Alesia join Coinbase as our new CFO”:
“She brings deep financial services experience to our growing company. As a fintech company, finance is core to everything that we do. We plan to continue bringing the best and brightest from both finance and technology companies to help create an open financial system for the world.”
Coinbase has made two other major hiring announcements recently: a former Facebook and Twitter exec joined the crypto company as VP of communications, and Coinbase’s recent acquisition of Earn.com brought its CEO on board as the first Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
Wall Street is seemingly in the midst of an exodus of talent to the crypto sphere. Just yesterday, April 17, one former Goldman Sachs employee joined crypto wallet Blockchain.com in their bid to attract more institutional clients. Last week another now ex-Goldman Sachs exec reportedly left to join Mike Novogratz’s crypto merchant bank.
Bloomberg notes that Och Ziff is currently struggling to “overcome a corruption scandal.” The company has hired former Credit Suisse executive Thomas Sipp to replace Haas.
