SINGAPORE (Mar 18): Ayondo’s CFO was the first to quit last July. This was followed by the resignation of its CEO in January. In its latest announcement over the weekend, it seems Ayondo’s CMO has thrown in the towel too.
In a regulatory filing on Saturday, Ayondo said Sarah Brylewski, 45, had resigned from her role as group chief marketing officer "to pursue other interests" after almost five years in the role.
According to Ayondo, the developer and operator of social trading platforms, Brylewski had earlier left Frankfurt-based Ayondo GmbH, a technology and service provider, on March 6.
Company sponsor UOB Kay Hian said it had spoken with Brylewski and "is not aware of any material reasons" for her resignation.
Brylewski would be the third C-suite executive – including chief financial officer Richard Fulton and chief executive and founder Robert Lempka – to have left Ayondo in the past nine months.
To recap, Ayondo on Jan 30 called for a trading halt before revealing there was a disagreement between auditors KPMG LLP and Ernst & Young LLP over how a key metric of financial strength was calculated for its 99.91%-owned UK subsidiary, Ayondo Markets Limited (AML).
As AML deals in CFDs (contracts for difference) and spread betting business activities which are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the subsidiary is required to maintain a Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratio.
In January, following feedback by one of Ayondo's employees regarding the calculation of CET1 ratio, KPMG in the UK was engaged to assess the appropriate accounting and regulatory treatment of certain items related to the determination of AML's regulatory capital position under UK's financial reporting standards.
Bear in mind that Ayondo’s independent auditor, EY Singapore, had audited Ayondo, including subsidiary AML, during the group’s IPO in March 2018 and concluded the group's financial statements gave a true and fair view of the state of the company's affairs as at Dec 31, 2017.
It turned out that KPMG's views were different from the accounting treatment process adopted by AML in the past which had been reviewed by EY. If KPMG's views with respect to technology software expenditures and inter-company balances and transactions were adopted by AML, it would have a negative impact on AML's CET1 ratio.
