John Shay

John Shay is a financial markets executive, entrepreneur, and market infrastructure leader with more than 40 years of experience building, scaling, and commercializing trading, clearing, and financial technology businesses.

Since 2007, John has been part of the Virtu Financial family of businesses, where he worked alongside Virtu founder Vin Viola to create the market's first over-the-counter interest rate clearinghouse, IDCG. The business was subsequently acquired by LCH in 2012. John later served as Senior Vice President of Global Markets at Virtu Financial, overseeing strategic trading, venue, vendor, and market relationships across fixed income, commodities, and foreign exchange markets. He currently serves as Senior Advisor at AccessFintech, where he advises on market structure, post-trade innovation, and strategic industry initiatives.

John also served as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Fixed Income and Commodities at Nasdaq, where he was responsible for global fixed income, commodities, clearing, broker services, and U.S. Treasury market activities. Earlier in his career, he founded Capital Market Services, a clearing and execution services business serving algorithmic trading firms, and spent 25 years at ICAP, where he held senior leadership roles in electronic trading, global sales, and strategic market development.

In addition to his executive leadership roles, John served as Chairman of Acadia's Board of Directors through the Company's growth and ultimate acquisition by London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) in 2023. During his tenure, he worked closely with management and shareholders to support the Company's strategic direction, governance, industry relationships, and long-term growth initiatives.

Throughout his career, John has been deeply involved in the development of financial market infrastructure and has served in leadership and advisory roles across numerous industry organizations, including the U.S. Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC), the Treasury Market Practices Group (TMPG), the Foreign Exchange Professionals Association (FXPA), and the Board of LCH Group.

At Helios Foundry Partners, John provides strategic guidance regarding business formation, commercialization, governance, market infrastructure, industry relationships, capital markets, and long-term growth strategy. His experience building and scaling complex institutional businesses provides valuable perspective as the Company evaluates and develops new opportunities across technology, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and emerging markets.