SYKE is delighted to announce the appointment of Simon Hurst to the role of senior legal engineer and to head up its new financial services practice. He starts with immediate effect.
Simon joins SYKE having previously spent more than 15 years at Barclays in a variety of positions, but most recently he headed up transaction management for corporate banking.
At Barclays he was technology and collaboration focused, and harnessed externally provided solutions such as DocuSign, Contract Express, and SEAL to transform business activity and solve business problems.
A lawyer by trade, he qualified into the banking practice at Allen & Overy and worked across a range of general banking, shipping finance and cross-border tax and asset finance transactions.
Simon said: “I am delighted to join SYKE to head up its new financial services practice. Increasingly legal technology is being used to address the challenges the banking sector is facing. Be that contract automation or more sophisticated data extraction and AI to solve for issues like Libor.
The industry I’ve been part of for the past 15 years or so is about to go through a period of significant change. I’m looking forward to combining my deep sector knowledge with my passion for tech, to help financial services clients navigate that smoothly.”
Alistair Maiden added: “I’m delighted Simon has agreed to join the team at SYKE. He brings with him a wealth of experience and expertise. By heading up our financial services practice, he will give it the focus and drive it needs.”
Hurst joins SYKE during a period of considerable growth and expansion. Last year the company announced the promotion of Lewis Bretts to the position of chief strategy officer, and made a raft of new appointments including John Buxton and Dom Burch to the roles of business development director and marketing director, Ben Murphy as senior legal engineer who joined from Sky Bet in October, and Adam Dessurne who was appointed as head of enterprise CLM practice in September.
SYKE employs more than 60 legal engineers globally, fluent in 14 languages, serving some of the largest and most respected companies on the planet.