One of the pioneers of Internet-based mortgage-backed securities trading, Ultraprise Corp., has appointed a new chief executive officer to execute plans the company's previous CEO has laid out.
John Bourne has been selected to replace David Levine, who co-founded Ultraprise.com and launched it in February 1999. Bourne was formerly Ultraprise's chief operating officer, and has 27 years of financial technology experience, including serving as CEO of the U.K.-based financial technology company QSP Inc., a provider of enterprise-wide financial information systems.
"He doesn't see any changes in vision, or strategy or the business plan," said a spokesman for Ultraprise. "His focus - and his focus has been since he came here - has been on executing on what we said we're going to do. He's kind of a nose to the grindstone kind of guy."
Under Levine, Ultraprise grew from an e-commerce solution provider in 1994 to a platform of $5.5 billion in loans traded in the secondary market. Over the past few months, Levine has appointed a senior management team to lead the company in a positive direction. For instance, Ultraprise is in the process of completely overhauling its sales process, to focus on buyside customers instead of sellside customers.
"So after we got the final pieces of the management team in place, David felt comfortable stepping down and going after some things he'd been working on, even before he launched Ultraprise.com," the spokesman said. "We basically know what we want to do and where we want to go."
Levine will remain with the company as chairman, overseeing the vision of the company, but has relinquished all day-to-day operations of Ultraprise to Bourne.
