Thesys Technologies lays off 41 people in Charleston

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Thesys Technologies, a New York-based fintech firm, is laying off 41 people in Charleston following the termination of a government contract, according to a regulatory filing and company spokeswoman.

In 2017, Thesys Technologies won a government contract to build a huge financial database, known as the Consolidated Audit Trail, to track the billions of shares traded every day in the U.S. market.

Thesys Technologies CEO Mike Beller said in an interview last year that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission mandated such a system after the 2010 flash crash caused nearly $1 trillion of value to disappear from the stock market within minutes, leaving regulators scrambling to track down data to figure out what happened.

The company said that the agreement to build the Consolidated Audit Trail has since been terminated and that those operations ended March 31.

“We can confirm that, as a result of the termination of the Thesys CAT LLC agreement with CAT NMS LLC to build and operate the Consolidated Audit Trail, Thesys is presently winding down its Thesys CAT operations in Charleston and New York,” a spokeswoman said in an email.

Thesys opened a Charleston office in 2012 and, as of last summer, was in the process of increasing its Lowcountry workforce to around 70 employees. A regulatory filing (.pdf) with the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce shows that 41 people were laid off last month.