Redwood appointed chairman of Sporting Index

Mark Redwood (50), a highly respected former senior Thomson Reuters executive, has been appointed the non-executive chairman of the Sporting Index group.
Redwood headed up Thomson Reuters’ sales and trading activities until stepping down at the end of December, and replaces Richard Glynn who left Sporting Index last year to head up the Ladbrokes group.
Backed by European private equity investor HgCapital, the Sporting Index group has evolved from its origins as a b2c sports spread betting business. Today the group is increasingly active in the b2b arena, supplying in-play betting odds to international betting and gaming operators under its Sporting Solutions brand. Big name bookmakers already signed up to the burgeoning service include William Hill, PartyGaming, the Tote and Skybet.
Warren Murphy, chief executive of the Sporting Index group, said: “We believe the sports betting landscape is rapidly changing and is mirroring the way the financial data services industry has evolved. We deliberately sought to bring in someone with a strong financial technology background.
“From that perspective, Mark coming on board is a real coup for us. His unrivalled expertise in developing and commercialising financial trading data and transactional systems will further strengthen our business as we continue to position the Sporting Index Group at the forefront of the sports betting industry.”
Commenting on his appointment, Redwood said: “I can see so many parallels between the financial and regulated sports betting markets. If Betfair is the exchange of the sports betting world, Sporting Index is the market maker and data provider.”
Until the end of December 2010 Redwood was president of Sales & Trading at Thomson Reuters, delivering financial information, news, collaboration and transactions services to trading floors across the globe. From 2006 he was CEO of Reuters Transaction Services and also a non-executive director at Tradeweb, the leading over-the-counter, online multi-asset class marketplace.
Core services under Mark’s responsibility included Thomson Reuters Eikon, Reuters 3000 Xtra, Matching, Dealing and the Reuters Trading suite. With revenues of $3.8 billion, Sales & Trading is the largest business unit in the Markets Division of Thomson Reuters.
Redwood joined Reuters in December 2002 following its acquisition of AVT Technologies Ltd, a pioneer in foreign exchange transaction technology. Between 2003 and 2006 Mark was responsible for Reuters transactions services. AVT was founded by Redwood in 1989, and as CEO he built a blue-chip customer base that at the time included leading global financial institutions such as ABN AMRO, Bank of New York, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, JP Morgan and UBS.
He has a First Class Honours Degree in Economics and Accounting from Manchester University, and wide experience in the financial markets, having worked at JP Morgan in London from 1983 to 1989, where he held a number of trading positions in Fixed Income and Exchange Traded Derivatives.

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