TSX Group picks American Thomas Kloet as CEO

By Lynne Olver

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's dominant market operator, TSX Group X.TO, has gone outside the country to recruit its new chief executive, announcing on Monday that former Fimat USA executive Thomas Kloet will start running the company on July 14.

TSX owns the Toronto Stock Exchange, Canada's biggest, and last month acquired the Montreal Exchange derivatives market.

Kloet, 50, a Chicago resident, and a certified public accountant, seems to have the right credentials to run the country's newly combined equities and derivatives markets, observers said.

Kloet was chief operating officer of global brokerage Fimat USA, LLC and its successor company, Newedge USA, LLC for the past five years, TSX Group said.

As chief executive of Singapore Exchange Ltd before that, he led the exchange through a transformation from a mutual utility to a commercial, publicly-traded entity, TSX said.

Kloet sits on the board of the CBOE Futures Exchange Inc and has been a director on the board of Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which is now CME Group CME.N.

Brendan Caldwell, president of Caldwell Securities, said it "could be a real plus" to have an American at the helm, rather than someone from either of the Toronto or Montreal factions.

"It doesn't matter the nationality as much as it matters that he makes a coherent, functional, organized, focused and competitive business out of two very disparate businesses," said Caldwell, whose firm owns TSX Group stock in various funds and client accounts.