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Uber, Goldman Sachs Veteran Joins Ripple as Asia Managing Director

Ripple taps a finance and tech veteran to be managing director in Southeast Asia.

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Ripple has hired Goldman Sachs and Uber tech veteran Brooks Entwistle to expand its operations in Southeast Asia.

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  • In an announcement posted Thursday, Ripple said Entwistle has been appointed as the new managing director of its Southeast Asia business headquartered in Singapore.
  • Prior to joining Ripple, Entwistle worked for three decades in finance and technology firms, most recently at Uber, where he was chief business officer (international). Before that he spent more than 20 years at Goldman, including a stint as chairman of the bank's Southeast Asia business.
  • The appointment comes as Ripple is expanding its presence across Southeast Asia which includes 14 countries for its RippleNet and has seen transactions in the region grow 10 times in 2020.
  • Growth in Asia is particularly important to the company in light of its legal woes in the U.S. Ripple was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission in December 2020 which alleges the firm violated securities law, arguing the company failed to register its XRP token as a security or seek an exemption before the company began selling it seven years ago.
  • “The adoption of RippleNet among the region’s many fintechs, payments service providers and SMEs makes Southeast Asia our biggest market for both customer demand and transaction growth," said RippleNet general manager Asheesh Birla.

Read more: Ripple Execs Ask Court to Block SEC Requests for Personal Financial Records

Tanzeel Akhtar

Tanzeel Akhtar has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Forbes Africa, Financial Times, The Street, Citywire, Investing.com, Euromoney, Yahoo! Finance, Benzinga, Kitco News, African Business Magazine, Hedge Week, Campden Family Office, Modern Investor, Spear's Wealth Management Magazine, Global Investor, ETF.com, ETF Stream, CIO UK, Funds Global Asia, Portfolio Institutional, Interactive Investor, Bitcoin Magazine, CryptoNews.com, Bitcoin.com, The Local, The Next Web, Mining Journal, Money Marketing, Marketing Week and more. Tanzeel trained as a foreign correspondent at the University of Helsinki, Finland and newspaper journalist at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. She holds a BA (Honours) in English Literature from the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and completed a semester abroad as an ERASMUS student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is NCTJ Qualified - Media Law, Public Administration and passed the Shorthand 100WPM with distinction. She does not currently hold value in any digital currencies or projects.

Tanzeel Akhtar