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Meet The Team
LINX Senior Management Team
John Souter joined LINX (London Internet Exchange Ltd.) as chief executive in March 2001 and was appointed to LINX Board of Directors in February 2002.
During the last twelve years, John has been responsible for a focus on a fair pricing policy for LINX, encouraging membership growth from all sectors of the Internet industry. This has re-enforced the mutual ethos of LINX whereby all members have an equal share and say in policy and direction fostering a continued sense of community.
It has been a period of strong growth for LINX with membership more than quadrupling despite a number of mergers and acquisitions along the way. In addition there has been major year-on-year investment in the LINX network to keep the company at the cutting edge.
As Board Director and Treasurer of Euro-IX since its formation, John has played a major part in ensuring that European Internet Exchanges have a platform to collaborate on issues such as benchmarking, regulation and the sharing of knowledge and expertise.
Prior to joining LINX, John had roles as director/managing director or SVP at BSI Quality Assurance, Mobile Systems International Plc, AAH Meditel Ltd, and Varetis Communications.
Malcolm’s role involves liaising with government and regulatory authorities on behalf of the LINX membership, representing the interests of members to government and briefing members on regulatory developments.
Malcolm acts as Regulatory Affairs spokesman for Euro-IX, the European association of Internet Exchanges. He is a director of ISPA UK, and a member of a number of organisations relating to Internet regulation. He has acted as an expert witness in ground-breaking court cases concerning network blocking in the UK (the Newzbin2 case, BT’s challenge to the Digital Economy Act) and Ireland (EMI v Eircom), and has testified to Select Committee hearings of both the UK House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Malcolm has previously served as Chair of the Network Security Information Exchange, a Director of the Internet Watch Foundation and as an elected member of the Nominet Policy Advisory Board. From 2008-2013 he served as President of EuroISPA, the pan-European organisation of membership associations representing the interests of Internet Service Providers.
Richard has been with LINX since 2014, running the technology group, responsible for all of LINX’s exchanges across the UK and in North America.
Previously, Richard has held senior operations and engineering positions with service providers, Colt Technology and IPC Network Services as well as within financial services companies such as Bloomberg and BGC Partners. He has over fifteen years experience in delivering high volume, low latency and agile network solutions.
LINX CFO, Malcolm Holt, joined in September 2016. He started working life training to become a Chartered Accountant over 25 years ago before moving into industry and commerce.
He has held many roles including Finance Director, Managing Director, Group Corporate
Development Director and worked in a variety of business sizes and sectors. These include telecoms, cable tv, business consultancy, business systems & planning, health services, financial services, engineering and power generation.
Howard Fisher has been with LINX since 2000, firstly as CFO and then as COO for fifteen years. He chose in 2016 to reduce his involvement on the operational side of the company and to focus on the governance of LINX and its affiliates.
Howard started his career with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Cambridge University. He has a lifetime of commercial experience, previously as a product development manager at Acorn Computers and many years as Commercial Director and Managing Director of a consumer software company.
Prior to moving to his current role in 2015, Ben was Chief Marketing Officer at The London Internet Exchange (LINX) for five years, leading the Marketing, Business Development and Member Relations team.
With more than 20 years experience of revenue generation in Internet related businesses, having previously held senior roles at digital marketing agencies, UK ISP’s and media owners, Ben has overseen the International expansion of LINX and the creation of a channel programme for carriers and data centres.
Ben is a board member of the Global Peering Forum as Vice President, and is active member on several industry programme and marketing committees.
Kurt Erik “Kurtis” Lindqvist has a broad background in engineering and business development of ISP and worldwide carrier networks. He has spent the past 20 years working actively in the Internet community in several varied roles.
From 2002 to 2015 he was the CEO of Netnod. Kurt Erik has been the chairman of Euro-IX since 2003. He is also a dedicated WG Chair for RIPE where he has serve d as NCC-Services WG Chair since 2004. He is a regular and appreciated speaker at several International Internet conferences such as RIPE, APRICOT and Nanog.
Previously Kurt Erik has chaired the Multi6, shim6 and v6ops WGs in the IETF. He is also the co-author of two RFCs. Kurt Erik has served as a member of the Internet Architecture Board between 2005-2009.
Over the years Kurt Erik has participated actively in the development, standardisation and deployment of IPv6 in the IETF and various other operational forums. In addition Kurt Erik served as an adviser to the Swedish Minister of Information Technology and Energy cooperating with Anna-Karin Hatt and the Swedish Minister of foreign affairs, Carl Bildt.