Global Custodian shortlists four for 2026 Industry Person

Global Custodian announced four nominees for the Industry Person of the Year 2026: Mark Austin of Northern Trust, Phil Brown of Clearstream, Fiona McNally of BNY Mellon and Isabelle Delorme of Euroclear. The winner will be decided by a live vote at the Leaders in Custody Awards on May 14 at The Savoy in London. The London edition of the award recognizes work in custody, market infrastructure and securities services technology and marks the event’s tenth year. The accolade is presented three times a year.

The shortlist was taken from a longlist of 10 after several months of review. Judges evaluated candidates on work on key projects, mandate wins, organisational milestones, innovation, leadership impact, team development, advocacy and participation in industry working groups and forums.

Mark Austin is pensions and insurance executive for EMEA at Northern Trust. He leads the firm’s strategy for pension and insurance clients across the region and manages relationships with major institutional retirement schemes. Over the past year Northern Trust won mandates from the £11 billion South Yorkshire Pensions Authority, Lancashire County Pension Fund and the government-backed workplace pension Nest. Austin served as chair of the Defined Contribution Investment Forum in 2024 after a term as vice chair in 2023. His work has covered de-risking programs, pension pooling and transitions to in-house asset management models.

Phil Brown is a long-serving executive at Clearstream. Recent developments at the firm include the D7 digital issuance platform and initiatives to digitize the Eurobond market. Clearstream enabled the first use of offshore Chinese government bonds for initial margin segregation, completed its first tri-party repo in Taiwan and signed a collateral partnership with EDAA in Saudi Arabia. The firm reported €1 trillion in collateral management outstandings and 4 million digital issuances on D7. Clearstream also advanced AI-driven client servicing tools, cloud-based sales automation and a memorandum of understanding with JASDEC on digital securities collaboration. Brown marked his 13th year as a board member of the International Securities Services Association.

Fiona McNally is managing director and global head of network management at BNY Mellon. She oversees the firm’s global custody network strategy, leads a team of market specialists and manages enterprise-level sub-custodian arrangements. McNally represents BNY Mellon on industry bodies and user committees, including Irish Funds, ISSA and the European Central Bank’s AMI-SeCo initiative. Her work focuses on operational resilience, governance and adapting network structures to regulatory and market changes.

Isabelle Delorme is global head of product strategy and innovation at Euroclear. She directs product development for issuers, fund managers and government clients with an emphasis on digital transformation and post-trade infrastructure. Delorme contributed to Euroclear’s work on Eurobond digitization alongside Clearstream and has led projects in tokenization, shareholder identification services and experiments with central bank digital currencies. Her team launched a next-generation EasyFocus service using Microsoft Cloud and AI technologies. Delorme joined Euroclear in 2019 as chief business officer of ESES and has held senior roles in strategy, product development and commercial transformation.

Last year’s London Industry Person of the Year was Margaret Harwood-Jones of Standard Chartered. Past recipients have included senior executives from JP Morgan, BNY Mellon, Northern Trust, Citi and Deutsche Bank. The 2026 winner will be announced during the Leaders in Custody Awards on May 14 at The Savoy in London.