JPMorgan's crypto team hiring in Singapore after tragic death of London co-head

At JPMorgan's investor day earlier this year, the bank's co-head of payments Umar Farooq said its crypto division Kinexys is "in a category by itself" due to its scale and "world-class team." The team, which is continuing to grow, took a significant hit earlier this year when one of its co-heads, Tyrone Lobban, tragically passed away.

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In January, a page on in-memory platform MuchLoved appeared for Lobban, who was 44 years old. He spent 22 years at JPMorgan, initially working on risk and trading systems, and was promoted to managing director just over two years ago. Lobban received multiple tributes from JPMorgan colleagues, including MD Omar Kondkher, who said he possessed an "optimistic spirit," and that he "created new and important things from thin air" at the bank. Lobban's page, which is accepting charitable donations to The Brain Tumor Charity, has received over £12k ($16.1k) in donations so far.

Lobban co-headed the division with Naveen Mallela, a Singapore based managing director. In that region, Kinexys is building new teams. An open listing at JPMorgan for a VP product manager in Singapore says that the division is building a "new team in Singapore." The team is working on Kinexys' Liink product, which the bank described on its Investor Day as a "first-of-its-kind information exchange network for global payments ecosystem."

Strangely, Lobban is still described as a co-head of Kinexys on the company's page, and Mallela has still been identified as a "co-head" of the division in recent interviews.

JPMorgan did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

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