Credit Suisse has hired one of the biggest names in trading technology for its equities team

Credit Suisse has hired Anthony Abenante, a trading technology veteran, to its equities business.

Anthony Abenante left Instinet, an electronic trading firm, in 2012 after serving as the company's CEO for five years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He has since provided counsel to a number of financial technology firms including KCG Holdings, the high-frequency trading firm recently acquired by Virtu Financial, and Bloomberg Tradebook.

Abenante is joining Credit Suisse from Aquiline Capital Partners, a private equity firm, where he helped identify investment opportunities in financial technology.

"With 28 years of financial technology, trading, and management experience across a number of Equities platforms, Anthony brings with him deep market knowledge and technological expertise that will help to drive our efforts to enhance client innovation across our technology offering," Mike Stewart, Credit Suisse global head of equities said in an internal memo reviewed by Business Insider.

Abenante will be based in New York, according to the memo, and will report directly to Stewart.

Stewart was hired by the Switzerland-based bank from UBS at the end of the last year to help revive the bank's equities business. The bank's equities trading revenue dipped 22% in Q1, the worst drop among its peers.

To be sure, things have been tough for the entire industry. According to a report out by Greenwich Associates, the market intelligence provider, the US equity brokerage business has declined by about 40% since 2008.

The bank has historically had one of the biggest equities businesses in the world. It was ranked between 4th and 6th for 2016 for equities sales and trading, according to data from data-analytics company Coalition.