The London Metal Exchange has appointed Stuart Sloan, an ex-colleague of chief executive Garry Jones, as chief operating officer and Catherine Lester as chief financial officer.

The exchange said in a statement that Sloan will be responsible for much of the operation of the LME and work with the senior management team in determining its future direction.

Sloan joins the LME from NYSE Euronext, now acquired by the IntercontinentalExchange, where his roles included head of strategic development and chief of staff for derivatives arm NYSE Liffe. He had joined Liffe in 1994 and his experience included strategic work on the establishment of an independent clearing function and the creation of a benchmark administration business.

Last year NYSE Euronext acquired Libor, the London Interbank Offered Rate, from the The British Bankers’ Association after beign chosen  by the Hogg Tendering Advisory Committee, an independent committee set up by the UK government to select a new administrator for the benchmark rate. Under the BBA regulators had fined banks for rigging the benchmark which is used as a reference for interbank lending and the trillions of dollars of financial transactions.

The transfer of Libor administration is expected to be completed early this year and ICE has said it will implement a new post-publication surveillance system and tests designed to assess the credibility of submissions and rates

Lester had been at PricewaterhouseCoopers since 2002 as a director in assurance, focusing on insurance and investment management clients, including a number of high-profile international and listed companies.

Sloan will report to the Jones and Lester will report to Garry Jones, and Paul Kennedy, group chief executive of Hong Kong Exchanges.

The Hong Kong exchange group acquired the LME in 2012 and last year appointed Jones as chief executive of the LME following the resignation of his predecessor Martin Abbott.

Jones had previously been chief executive of NYSE Liffe and group executive vice president and head of global derivatives for NYSE Euronext. Before joining Liffe he had been chief executive of Brokertec Europe and Icap Electronic Broking after a career in  a number of investment banks and hedge funds, including Japan’s Daiwa Securities, France’s Banque Paribas and Merrill Lynch.