Texas Stock Exchange hires first CFO as launch nears

Dive Brief:

The Dallas-based TXSE Group, the parent of the upstart Texas Stock Exchange, has hired Jaime Gow to become its first CFO, according to a Monday release and a TXSE spokesperson. Gow will take the CFO seat on June 1, he said.
Gow, most recently finance chief of the Warburg Pincus fintech company Sagent, served from 2019 to 2023 at home loan servicer Mr. Cooper in a number of senior roles including as CFO, according to his LinkedIn account. Gow’s experience also includes a stint as chief accounting officer at Miami, Florida-based Capital Bank.
The appointment coincided with the TXSE’s naming of 12 inaugural directors to its board. “The addition of Jaime and these directors gives us additional expertise and governance as we work to bring real competition to America's public markets,” James H. Lee, CEO of TXSE Group and The Texas Stock Exchange, said in a statement.

Dive Insight:

The leadership announcements come about two months ahead of the planned July trading launch of the bourse that that the Dallas Business Journal dubbed “Y’all Street.”

Since its inception in 2024, the group’s finance and accounting functions have been handled “by an experienced team from PwC,” according to the TXSE spokesperson. Now “Gow is part of a larger team being positioned to internalize the finance and accounting functions,” he said.

In addition to naming its slate of directors Monday, TXSE has also taken a number of other steps to strengthen its leadership by snapping up executives with experience at legacy exchanges. In March, it named Greg Ferrari to join as the TXSE’s chief operating officer, swiping him from Nasdaq where he was formerly head of North American exchange trading. That month, the company also tapped Liz Hocker, most recently regional head of capital markets for the New York Stock Exchange.

The TXSE Group Board will include: Rick Roberts, former commissioner of the SEC; Jeff Starr, head of operational services at Charles Schwab; and Anna Kurzrok, head of market structure at Jefferies.

The Securities and Exchange Commission formally approved the TXSE’s Form 1 registration to operate as a national securities exchange last September. Its mission is to reverse a decline in the number of U.S. public companies “by reducing the burden of going and staying public while maintaining some of the highest quantitative standards in the industry,” according to a release at the time.

While a core element of the new exchange’s pitch has been that it will cut companies’ costs of complying with onerous regulations, the regulations are largely set by the SEC and not the NYSE or Nasdaq, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The TXSE’s new CFO has taken a traditional accounting-based route to the CFO seat. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Florida International University’s College of Business as well as a master’s in professional accounting from University of Miami, according to his LinkedIn profile. Early in his career he also served two years at EY in Miami.