Fidelity Hires Barclays' Former Head of Digital Assets

Financial services giant Fidelity Investments has hired a former head of digital assets project at investment bank Barclays.

The new hire, Chris Tyrer, joined Fidelity at the end of April, according to his LinkedIn profile update. The profile, however, does not mention any further details on the role, except the mention of “Digital Assets.”

Tyrer worked as the head and managing director of digital assets project at Barclays for about eight months and left the firm in August 2018. Prior to that, he was the head of commodity trading at the bank between 2015-2017.

This is not Tyrer's first time at Barclays. He first joined the bank back in 2001 and worked there until 2011 as the director and global head of crude oil trading. Later, for about 3 years, he also worked at commodity trading company Mercuria Energy Group as a senior crude oil trader, before returning to Barclays in 2015, according to the profile.

In his most recent role at Barclays, Tyrer reportedly worked on exploring the cryptocurrency space.

Barclays planned to launch a cryptocurrency trading desk last year, but later the bank’s CEO pushed back saying that there are no immediate plans to open the desk.

Just last month, Fidelity also hired Coinbase’s director of institutional sales, Christine Sandler.

Fidelity, having over $7 trillion assets under management, launched its cryptocurrency trading and custody platform last month.

Fidelity image via Shutterstock