Management changes announced at Oanda, Gain Capital and speculated at CMC Markets

Oanda, Gain Capital and CMC Markets are undergoing senior management changes, signalling shifting strategies as the market for online trading evolves under new regulation and market conditions.

Toronto-headquartered Oanda has appointed Jesper Bruun-Olsen, managing director for northeast Asia and head of Oanda Japan, based in Tokyo, while Stacey Grant-Thompson becomes chief marketing officer for Oanda globally, based in Toronto. Both report to Oanda chief executive K Duker.

Bruun-Olsen joins from Tradeweb Japan, where he was most recently managing director for Asia-Pacific, responsible for client strategy. He has also worked at Nordea Bank, where he was responsible for new and existing client relationships with institutional investors in Asia and Europe. Grant-Thompson joins Oanda from Rogers Communications, where she had worked for eight years. She had previously worked at ING Direct Canada and McKinsey & Co.

Oanda also appointed Mich Matthews to its board of directors. Matthews worked at Microsoft for 22 years where she helped build the company's brands as chief marketing officer before she retired last year.

Kittu Kolluri, chairman of the Oanda board of directors, says Matthews' appointment will help the company continue on its journey to be the most trusted partner in retail forex trading.

At Gain Capital, Joseph Wald joins as executive vice-president and head of institutional having formerly headed Knight Capital's institutional electronic trading business. Wald is responsible for leading GTX, the institutional foreign exchange business launched in 2010. Based in New York, he reports to Glenn Stevens, chief executive of Gain Capital.

"Institutional trading is an important part of our growth strategy and having Joe lead this part of the business will help us build on the success we've had to date and achieve our goal of becoming a market-leading electronic communication network in the FX space," says Stevens.

Meanwhile, CMC Markets remains tight-lipped about reports that founder and executive chairman Peter Cruddas is due to take the reigns as chief executive of the online trading company, replacing Doug Richards.

Cruddas founded CMC Markets in 1989 and sold a 10% stake to Goldman Sachs in 2007, which the US bank then wrote down in 2010.

"We are unable to respond to speculation. We can confirm Doug Richards remains a CMC Markets employee," says a spokesperson in London.

According to the retail trading company's annual report, CMC Markets returned to profits of £2.5 million in the year ending March 31, 2012, after making a loss of £19.4 million the previous year.

Richards himself joined CMC in 2007 from German-owned AWD Group plc, becoming chief executive in 2009 after Jim Pettigrew left the business.

Pettigrew replaced Cruddas as chief executive in 2007 when the firm was planning to list.