Copper Hires Five Former Staff From Bank of America

The digital asset custodian continues its hiring push as it seeks to expand prime infrastructure offerings

article-image

Source: Shutterstock

share

key takeaways

  • Michael Roberts will lead Copper’s new prime infrastructure team
  • The appointments come after Copper hired a chief operating officer and chief legal officer last month

Digital asset custodian Copper has hired five former Bank of America Merrill Lynch employees to lead the expansion of its prime infrastructure offerings. 

The appointees include Michael Roberts, Adam Groom, Paul Barham, Ben Carr and Ross Budgen, the company announced Monday. The new additions will report to Copper Chief Revenue Officer Boris Bohrer-Bilowitzki.

Roberts spent 16 years at Bank of America, according to his LinkedIn profile, most recently as a managing director and head of the bank’s prime platform for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He is now set to lead the new prime infrastructure team.

“I have watched Copper from afar for some years now and been continuously impressed at the speed and quality of the solutions they bring to market,” Roberts said in a statement. “Boris and the team understand the technology institutional investors want and need to pursue crypto strategies.”

Groom and Barham, who led relationship management and product development, respectively, for Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s prime platform in EMEA, join Roberts on the Copper team. 

Carr and Budgen add expertise in product development, account management and analytics.

The ex-Bank of America Merrill Lynch members will help build Copper’s prime infrastructure offering with custody, collateral management and hedging services, a firm spokesperson told Blockworks in an email. 

Founded in 2018, Copper offers custody, trading and settlement solutions for institutional investors across 450 cryptoassets and roughly 45 exchanges.

The planned expansion comes as more prime brokers join the Copper ecosystem and its ClearLoop network, according to the company. Launched in 2020, ClearLoop removes the need for institutional investors to transfer digital assets onto an exchange before being able to trade and includes collateral management for crypto derivatives.

The latest appointments come shortly after the company named Sabrina Wilson as its chief operating officer and Carly Nuzbach Lowery as chief legal officer last month.  

Wilson was most recently global co-head of Citi’s futures, over-the-counter clearing and foreign exchange prime brokerage business. She has also served in various roles at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank.

Nuzbach Lowery joined Copper from Coinbase, where she was associate general counsel in London. Prior to that, she was senior legal counsel at Uber and Barclays. 

The move is part of a larger migration of talent from traditional finance to crypto. 

“While we have seen a couple of folks make this move, it appears to us — at the moment, at least — far from a trend,” Lawrence Lieberman, senior managing director at recruiting company The Orion Group, told Blockworks. “We have certainly had more crypto-related conversations than expected over the past few months. [There’s] lots of intrigue, but still enough uncertainty to make this a move only for the real risk-takers.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Featured.png

Research

Helium stands at a pivotal moment in its evolution as a decentralized wireless network, balancing rapid growth, economic restructuring, and global expansion. With accelerated growth in domestic DAUs and Hotspots supporting its network, Helium is leveraging strategic partnerships and innovative proposals to scale internationally. The recent implementation of HIP 138, “Return to HNT,” has unified its token economy under HNT, simplifying participation and strengthening liquidity, while HIP 139’s phase-out of CBRS refocuses efforts on scalable Wi-Fi offload. Meanwhile, governance shifts under HIP 141 raise questions about centralization as Nova Labs consolidates control over the roadmap.

article-image

The DeFi Education Fund has ideas on how the crypto-friendly SEC can bring Commissioner Peirce’s vision to life

article-image

“Be prepared to do more with less,” Framework Ventures’ Michael Anderson said

article-image

Q1 may have been “frustrating,” but things are looking brighter for Q2

article-image

Tokens worth 20% of the current supply of the TRUMP memecoin launched by the president are set to be unlocked tomorrow

article-image

A crypto-industry lawsuit is “moot” now that Joint Resolution 25 has been signed into law

article-image

Fed Chair Powell assured markets that the labor market is in “good place,” dependent on price stability