Past Speakers (2019)

Paul has worked in the financial industry since 1994, specializing in quantitative finance for multi‐asset strategies, including currency. Throughout his career he has held positions on both the buy and sell sides of the industry, cultivating unique experiences, expertise and insights as a quantitative strategist, portfolio manager, trader and sales person in global equities, global fixed income, derivatives and global foreign exchange. Paul spent the first half of his career on the buy‐side holding prominent positions at Baring Asset Management, Santander Global Advisors, Putnam Investments, Fleet/Columbia Management and at his own fund Prometheus Quantitative Strategies. On the sell‐side Paul has spent the later part of his career specializing in strategies and quantitative alpha generation, utilizing electronic and algorithmic trading techniques, at Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and TD Securities. Paul is established as one of the industry’s leading authorities on the subject of market microstructure in global foreign exchange and transaction cost analysis (TCA), having published a myriad of widely read papers on these subjects as well as being the named inventor of two important patented solutions for FX TCA. Paul holds Master degrees in Mathematical Economics and Business Administration from Boston University and a Bachelors degree in Music Composition from Boston University and the New England Conservatory of Music.

Brad J. Bailey is a Research Director with industry analyst firm Celent, based in the firm’s New York office.  He is an expert in data infrastructure and market structure across asset classes and is a recognized thought leader in emerging front office technology, data/trading analytics and capital markets fintech. Brad’s research focuses on the evolution of market structure, trading, data analytics, and innovations in trading technology architecture and deployment.  He has published research on FX, fixed income, cross-asset trading, trading analytics, market data, and cloud models for deploying trading and data analytic infrastructure.  He has also recently worked on deep dive FX front office strategy and technology vendor selection.

Andrew Busch is the Chief Market Intelligence Officer for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. After spending 30 years in the financial services sector, Mr. Busch comes to the CFTC from the boutique economic research company he founded, Bering Productions Inc. (BPI), where he was CEO. Before BPI, Mr. Busch was the Global Currency and Public Policy Strategist at the Bank of Montreal from 2009 to 2013. He also served as the Bank of Montreal’s Global Foreign Exchange Strategist and was an outside advisor to the White House, US Treasury and Congress on the financial markets from 2005-2009. Mr. Busch began his career in financial services working in the foreign exchange trading department for the Northern Trust Company

Ken Chee, CFA professional with over 25 years of experience. His expertise includes international equity portfolio management, FX trading, hedging and execution, equity swap execution, derivative hedging strategies formulation, risk management, emerging market stocks selection, and external investment managers selection. As a Portfolio Manager at STRS Ohio, Ken consistently delivers outstanding short-term and long-term risk-adjusted performance on a multi-billion international portfolio. He has also implemented a 50% currency hedging policy and is actively managing the currency hedging program. Prior to STRS Ohio, Ken was a Senior Risk Analyst at Bank One (currently JP Morgan) and Huntington Bank

Manu is the incoming CEO of DMALINK - a leading independent electronic trading venue for EM FX. With over 16 years of cross asset OTC derivative sales & structuring experience, his role will be to lead strategic partnerships across EMEA and to build out the product suite.
He will join DMALINK after spending 12 years at Lloyds Bank across Sales & Trading, and Capital Markets. He spent over a decade in FX Options & Rates Sales where he worked closely with private side M&A teams, large corporate clients and financial sponsors. Most recently, Manu worked in acquisition finance origination, providing senior loan, mezzanine and high yield financing to support acquisitions, recapitalisations and refinancings by financial sponsors. During this time, he had the opportunity to advise several, now highly successful, FinTech start-ups.
Prior to this, he spent several years at Barclays Capital in FICC Sales, providing an advisory and marketing service to Financial Institutions and large corporate clients, that entailed structuring, selling and executing exotic interest rate, inflation, commodity and currency option solutions, encompassing both hedging and monetization strategies.
Manu has a Masters degree in business administration and a Bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of Leicester.

Ruben Costa-Santos is the head of Multi Asset Class Analytics at ITG, a leading independent broker and financial technology provider, where he oversees Foreign Exchange and Fixed Income product across the Analytics and Workflow Technology divisions. Previously Ruben worked at Deutsche Bank, where among other roles he served as head of FX Client Platforms for the Americas, responsible for technology enabled FX solutions for institutional clients and for the cross border payments platform. Ruben has a Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics. Prior to working in Finance, he conducted research in discrete quantum gravity and statistical mechanics.

Victoria Cumings is the Americas representative of the Global Foreign Exchange Division (GFXD) of the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA), based in the offices of the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) in New York. Since its establishment, the GFXD has grown to 25 members, between them representing around 80% of the FX inter-dealer market, and is represented in Europe, the Americas and Asia.  The GFXD works with key regulators, Central Banks and other interested parties to monitor policy and regulatory developments that could affect the FX markets and seeks to ensure the establishment of harmonized regimes and infrastructure to enable a robust, well-functioning and effective FX market for all participants.  

Alessio de Longis, CFA, is co-head and portfolio manager of the Multi-Asset Team at OppenheimerFunds. Mr. de Longis leads the group’s macro strategy, focusing on business cycle dynamics, global macro regimes, and their impact on asset class risks and returns. Additionally, he manages active currency strategies in multi-asset portfolios. Prior to joining the multi-asset team, from 2004 to 2013 he was a member of the Global Debt Team at OppenheimerFunds, where he served as currency portfolio manager. He is a published author in the field of systematic currency investing using macro-based strategies. Additionally, he published an Op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on the Italian and European debt crisis in 2011. He holds an MSc in Financial Economics and Econometrics from the University of Essex, UK and an MA in Economics from the University of Rome, Italy. He is a CFA charterholder. 

Ankeet Dedhia is the Head of FX Product, Americas at LCH. In this role he is responsible for leading all products, services and business development efforts within the Americas for LCH’s FX clearing service, ForexClear. Since joining LCH in 2012, Ankeet has been part of the product team for SwapClear, LCH’s interest rate clearing service, where he facilitated adoption of regulatory mandates and managed commercial demands from a diverse range of financial institutions. Prior to joining LCH, Ankeet was a management consultant for Ernst & Young, focused on strategy review and gap analysis related to OTC derivatives regulatory reform. Before this role, he worked at the CME on its futures and OTC risk management team, focused on cross-asset initiatives across FX, interest rates and credit derivatives. He holds a master’s in finance from the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Stuart School of Business and an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from the University of Mumbai.

 Tom is Head of EMEA ETF Client Trading at Invesco. The client trading team helps Invesco investors implement ETFs into their portfolio and trading strategies for buying or selling in the most cost effective and efficient way as possible. As technical ETF experts the team is driven to deliver a superior investment experience for investors and traders to leverage ETFs for their specific market access needs.  

Ralf Donner is Global Head of Client FX Algo Execution at Goldman Sachs, responsible for the firm’s FX algorithmic execution offering, pre- and intra-trade liquidity and transaction cost analytics, and post-trade reporting. Ralf started his professional career at ABN Amro in 2006 as an FX options quant, followed by 8 years with Morgan Stanley in London and New York, first in model validation of options pricing models and then in quant sales, focusing on systematic FX trading strategies and FX market microstructure. From 2014-16 he ran Morgan Stanley’s QSI team in New York. Ralf holds a Masters in physics and a doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford University.

Investment strategist focused on FX and Fixed Income markets. Extensive experience having worked in both the London and US markets. Strong quantitative skills and driven to produce tradable investment ideas.Significant client-facing experience across the leveraged and real money community. Has managed strategy teams for a number of years.

Jason Fromer is a managing director and the head of US FICC trading at Manulife Asset Management, responsible for the global currency trading needs of the firm. Jason has extensive product knowledge in derivative markets, commodities, currencies and debt. In addition to his strong buy-side and sell-side relationships, Jason has experience in trading system development. Prior to joining Manulife, he was at State Street Global Markets, where he was a vice president in foreign exchange sales. Before State Street, Jason held the position of head currency trader at Putnam Investments. Earlier in his career, he worked on the macro trading desk at Soros Fund Management.

Kristina Hooper is the Chief Global Market Strategist at Invesco. She entered the financial industry in 1995. Prior to joining Invesco, Ms. Hooper was the US investment strategist at Allianz Global Investors. Prior to Allianz, she held positions at PIMCO Funds, UBS (formerly PaineWebber) and MetLife. She has regularly been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Reuters and other financial news publications. She was featured on the cover of the January 2015 issue of Kiplinger’s magazine, and has appeared regularly on CNBC and Reuters TV. Ms. Hooper earned a BA degree, cum laude, from Wellesley College; a JD from Pace University School of Law, where she was a Trustees’ Merit Scholar; an MBA in finance from New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, where she was a teaching fellow in macroeconomics and organizational behavior; and a master’s degree from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, where she focused on labor economics. Ms. Hooper holds the Certified Financial Planner™, Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA), Certified Investment Management Analyst® (CIMA) and Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC) designations. She serves on the boards of trustees of the Foundation for Financial Planning, which is the pro bono arm of the financial planning industry, and Hour Children.

Jim Iorio has been Global Head of Sales at NEX Markets since July 2016. Based in New York, Jim’s primary focus is on ensuring NEX Markets' delivers the full value of its products and services to meet the rapidly evolving needs of customers and leading the group’s global salesforce. Jim was previously Global Head of Currency and Commodities Distribution at Barclays. During his 23 year career at both Barclays and Lehman Brothers, he has held a wide variety of senior roles across FX and fixed income asset classes and has extensive experience leading high-performing global organisations through significant change and business cycles.

Kevin Kimmel manages the FX business at Citadel Securities. Prior to this role he led the firm’s Equities client algo business. Before joining Citadel Securities, Kevin worked on cross asset strategy at J.P. Morgan with a focus on building out the firm’s electronic trading capabilities. In this position he worked with the firm’s leaders to invest in technology, further build quantitative capabilities, grow electronic market share, and operated the global cross asset Electronic Trading Committee. Previously, he worked at Intercontinental Exchange, Tradeweb and Lehman Brothers. Kevin will be taking part in the session ‘360° Perspective: FX eTrading in 2018 and beyond – how can you measure the performance of liquidity providers to establish the best partners in different trading scenarios?’ on the 11th September.

Ron is the global head of electronic FX trading at Northern Trust. Prior to joining Northern Trust, Ron was a director at Citi FX in New York on the FX Automated Trading desk, working on the creation and improvement of FX pricing and hedging models.In his earlier years, Ron honed his skills at Getco, Vortex Trading, as well as on the floor of the CBOT. He went on to become a founder and managing member of Holon Trading, a Chicago based electronic FX market maker, specializing in automated trading and liquidity provisioning.  Ron has been involved in the electronic markets since 1999, and in the trading world since 1995. He has vast experience from both the buy and sell-side.

Ben is Head of Distribution and Liquidity Management for the Americas at XTX Markets – the leading global electronic liquidity provider. Prior to XTX he was in FX, Rates and Credit e-trading at UBS. XTX Markets is a leading quantitative-driven electronic liquidity provider partnering with counterparties, exchanges and e-trading venues globally to provide liquidity in the Equity, FX, Fixed Income and Commodity markets.

Andy Maack, CFA, is a senior manager in Vanguard Fixed Income Group. He serves as the head of FX Trading supporting Vanguard’s equity and fixed income portfolios globally. Andy has previously worked within the Investment Management Division and served as an equity portfolio manager and municipal bond trader.

Andy Mahoney has been working in the financial services industry for more than 10 years, with time spent at Goldman Sachs and trading systems provider, FlexTrade. Initially a strategy specialist, Andy helped grow the FlexTrade business in the EMEA region from a four-person outpost to a major enterprise with a team of more than 100, leading to his appointment as Head of Implementation. In 2010 he joined Goldman Sachs, where he led the REDIPlus product in Europe, and managed liquidity strategy and smart order routing across Goldman's wider electronic business. Mahoney's enthusiasm for trading technology saw him return to FlexTrade in 2012 and is now Head of Sales, driving the company's business strategy to regulation, cross asset trading and providing a fully open architecture, creating a new trading ecosystem that allows third-party technology to be seamlessly integrated.

Larisa Mathur, Founder & CEO: VNR Partners Over a decade of experience in big data, consumer behavioural analytics and data science in a variety of industries from retail to aerospace, b2b & b2c, online and offline. Larisa founded VNR Partners 2 years ago with a mission of leveraging alternative data as a function of portfolio growth, and leveraging automation technologies for increased efficiencies and reduced trading costs. VNR Partners is a fin-tech company generating and executing algorithmic trading alpha models for its investors, and creating products founded on traditional and alternative data sets using machine learning technologies.

Christopher Matsko is the Head of FX Trading Services at Portware, a multi-asset EMS specializing in trade automation and execution. He is responsible for overseeing all facets of the firm’s global FX business, which includes guiding Portware FX clients through an increasingly complex regulatory environment that demands real-time analytics, transaction cost analysis (TCA), and custom trading capabilities. Christopher’s experience providing workflow solutions to the asset management community via multi-dealer E-FX platforms gives him an unparalleled perspective on the various execution methods employed over the past decade of market evolution. Prior to joining Portware Christopher held senior roles in management and sales at 360T and FXall, where his main focus was on growing both firms’ presence within the real money trading community.

Brendan McMurtray is an FX Electronic Trading & Market Structure Analyst in the Global Trading Division of T. Rowe Price. He is an assistant vice president of T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. Brendan earned a B.S., summa cum laude, in chemical engineering from University of Maryland, Baltimore County and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has passed all three levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst program and may be awarded the charter upon completion of the required work experience.

Michael joined the Rady School in 2016 to teach and coordinate the new Master of Finance program. Prior to his return to academia, he spent many years at BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors (BGI). At BlackRock and BGI, he led research-oriented currency and fixed income investment teams. Most recently he was a Managing Director in the Multi-Asset Strategies Executive Group where he was Senior Research Advisor, working with investment teams around the globe. Prior to that he was Head of Fixed Income and Currency Research in a global macro hedge fund. He joined BGI as Head of Currency Research and was in charge of currency hedge funds. Until joining UCSD, he also taught a class on modeling currency markets in the Master of Financial Engineering program at U.C. Berkeley. Prior to joining BGI in 2005, he was Professor of Economics and Dean's Council Distinguished Scholar at Arizona State University. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Board, the Bank for International Settlements, and the International Monetary Fund. He has been a visiting professor at the Kellogg School, Northwestern University; Anderson School, UCLA; University of Frankfurt; and University of Munich. Michael will be chairing both main days of the conference, 11th and 12th September.

David Mercer is the Chief Executive Officer of LMAX Exchange Group, a leading player in global financial markets. LMAX Exchange operates multiple institutional execution venues for trading FX and crypto currencies. David is a former City banking executive and currency specialist, with an extensive track record of building profitable, innovative, high growth businesses, ranging from start-ups to turn arounds of growth-stage companies. He joined LMAX Exchange as chief executive in 2011 and led the successful management buyout of the company in 2013. Since then, he has built LMAX Exchange into a global brand in financial markets and a leading operator of institutional FX exchanges.  LMAX Exchange has been recognised as one of the UK’s fastest growing technology companies. Prior to joining LMAX Exchange Group, David was CEO at Cantos, Non-Executive Director at Velocity Trade and COO of the Emerging Markets business at Credit Suisse. He has also held senior executive roles at IFX Markets and Saxo Bank (Synthesis Bank) in London, Geneva and Sydney. David started his financial services career in the Banking and Regulatory division of Ernst & Young in 1989.

Chris Milonopoulos is the lead Trader on Lazard's Emerging Markets Debt team. He began working in the investment field in 2000. Prior to joining Lazard in 2010, Chris was a consultant at Ernst & Young LLP in their asset management practice focusing on FX and money market trading. Previously, he was an investment analyst and junior trader at HSBC Asset Management (formerly Halbis) focusing on Emerging Markets Debt and Currencies. Chris started his career at Bloomberg LP, where he was a senior account manager and later a sales team leader for alternative investments. Chris has an MBA and MS in Engineering from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Engineering from McGill University.

Amish joined BNP Paribas in 2014 as a Director within the FXLM & Commodity Derivatives division of Global Markets and is currently based in New York. Amish manages sales and product development of BNP Paribas’ award-winning Cortex iX algorithmic execution business for the Americas. In late 2017, Amish expanded his responsibilities to become Head of Algo iX Global Sales Strategy, tasked with driving growth and expansion globally across BNP’s corporate & institutional client franchises. Prior to joining BNP, Amish started his career at Deutsche Bank and also spent four years working at Citigroup. Collectively, he has over 13 years of experience in Fixed Income with a specialty in electronic trading and digital platforms.

David Newns is a Senior Managing director at State Street and global head of GlobalLink Execution services. In his role he is responsible for Currenex and FX Connect, GlobalLink’s core execution and trading platform businesses. Previously, Mr. Newns was Global Head of Currenex and SwapEx and prior to held the roles of Chief Operating Officer for State Street Global Exchange Trading & Clearing and State Street eExchange EMEA. He has more than 16 years of experience in the eFX industry, having joined Currenex in 2001 as a founding member of Currenex’s London operation. Prior to joining Currenex, David held several positions in technical services at MicroStrategy, a leading global provider of enterprise software platforms for business intelligence. David holds a Master of Arts in Theology and Religious Studies from Cambridge University, UK.

Exante Data and Exante Advisors were founded by Jens Nordvig in 2016. Jens has an 18-year track record as a leading market economist and strategist.  He was ranked #1 in currency strategy by Institutional Investor five years in a row (2011-2015).  Exante Data provides analytical tools and smart data solutions to institutional investors globally. Exante Advisors provides discretionary macro strategy to CIOs of a select number of high profile macro-focused investment managers. Jens serves as CEO of both companies. Jens Nordvig is a published author and was awarded the Wolfson Economics finalist prize in 2012 and the Rybczynski Young Economist Prize in 2001. He holds Masters and PhD degrees in economics from University of Aarhus and University of Southern Denmark (Thesis: Essays on the Euro Crisis).  He is a frequent contributor to leading business news outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and CNBC. Jens Nordvig was previously a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, a  Senior Investment Associate at Bridgewater Associates and Head of Fixed Income Research and Global Currency Strategy at Nomura Securities.

Giuseppe Nuti is the head of US Rates Trading for UBS Americas, a team focused on trading linear and non-linear products in the USD Fixed-Income markets, specializing in high-velocity assets. Prior to this role, Giuseppe was an algorithmic trader at UBS - New York - specialized in fixed income and foreign exchange. He has worked as a trader for over fifteen years, initially in the interest-rates options and swaps market and, since 2006, in the European and US Government bond markets. He has experience working both within the primary dealer community and in the high-frequency environment (at KCG and Citadel.) At UBS, he has run the eTrading desk within FRC in the U.S., with particular focus on electronic market-making. Giuseppe holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science with particular focus on Markov Decision Processes applied to finance from University College London and an MSc in financial mathematics from City University, London. He has taught various courses, including Financial Computing at UCL and has supervised a number of Ph.D. students - both at UCL and CASS Business School. His research interests are in algorithmic trading, numerical solutions to Bayesian inference, and interaction between market participants in price-setting microstructure. Giuseppe currently lives in Larchmont (NY) where he spends most of his free time enjoying his young family and dog.

Matt O'Hara joined 360T in 2015 with over 20 years of market knowledge and experience within the financial industry. Matt joined 360T from Thomson Reuters where he was a Senior Vice President and Head of Capital Markets in the Americas. He joined Reuters in 2006 as the Head of FX & MM for the Americas and went on to manage Global FX Business Development and Operations. Prior to joining Reuters, he held senior FX and eCommerce management roles in London, Chicago and New York while working for The First National Bank of Chicago, Bank One and JP Morgan. His primary responsibilities at 360T encompass driving all growth and business activities in Americas.

Roel is the head of FIC quantitative trading at Deutsche Bank. He started his industry career as a quant in cash equity algo trading in 2006, and subsequently held various roles in electronic FX spot trading, including co-head of the business. Roel holds a PhD in econometrics, is a senior research fellow at the London School of Economics, and has published widely on the econometric analysis of high frequency data and FX trading.

Javier Paz is an industry consultant and recognized researcher with FICC research experience at Credit Suisse First Boston, BankBoston, and Aite Group. Most recently, he founded and heads up FX research and advisory firm ForexDatasource.com. He has authored more than 50 institutional reports on electronic trading topics and regularly serves as judge for eFX industry awards.

Peter joined Saxo in 2014 and is responsible for Saxo’ FX PB services. Peter has 26 years’ experience in financial services. Prior to Saxo, Peter was Global Head of FX Prime Brokerage at Rabobank in London, a business he set up in 2005, was responsible for the bank’s FXPB desks in London, New York and Hong Kong. Rabobank’s FXPB business grew to one of the largest in the market and had a wide spread of institutional clients including global banks, private banks, hedge funds, proptrading firms and broker agency desks. Peter also held a number of trading roles at Societe Generale, Daiwa Securities and Man Group. Peter holds an ACI Diploma.

Momtchil is Head of the Currencies team at BNP Paribas Asset Management, where he is responsible for setting strategy for currency alpha, active hedging and overlay portfolios. He joined FFTW, a predecessor of BNP Paribas Asset Management, in 2013 and is based in New York. Prior to his current position, Momtchil was Deputy Head of Currencies. Prior to joining us, he was a Director and Senior Portfolio Manager at Hathersage Capital Management and before that Head of Currencies for Hermes Fund Managers and Senior Portfolio Manager at Pictet Asset Management. He began his investment career at Invesco Asset Management, first as a Senior Economist and then as a Senior Portfolio Manager. Momtchil has 17 years of investment experience. He holds an MSc in Finance from Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, and a PhD in Financial Econometrics from University of Basel. He is a CFA Charterholder. Momtchil has advised various asset management firms, including PIMCO and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, in the area of currency return analytics. In 2008, he coined the term “currency betas” to describe returns from generic currency investment strategies. He has published extensively in finance and investment journals, including the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Financial Analysts Journal. Most recently, Momtchil has co-edited the book The Role of Currency in Institutional Portfolios, published by Risk Books. He is a member of The Economic Club of New York and the Swiss Society for Financial Market Research. He recently served on the Editorial Board of the Financial Analysts Journal (2010-2016).

Nate joined Commodity Asset Management pre-launch as a Portfolio Manager and Partner. Nate began his career at Goldman, Sachs, & Co. as a derivatives and options trader. Subsequently, Nate held leadership roles at multiple distinguished asset managers, including Bridgewater Associates and AQR Capital Management. Nate serves on the board of the Washington Heights and Inwood Community Council, as well as on the Mount Sinai Investment Advisory Committee. Outside of investing, Nate utilizes multifactor statistical models to forecast NASCAR race outcomes, and has ranked in the top 1% worldwide.

Christina Qi serves as Co-Founder and Partner at Domeyard LP, a hedge fund known for its focus on high frequency trading. Domeyard closed its Series C in 2017 and trades up to $1 billion USD per day. Her company’s story has been featured on the front page of Forbes, Nikkei, and other publications. Christina brings experience in investment management, sales and trading, derivatives operations, and technology across Goldman Sachs, UBS Securities, Zions Bank, and MIT Lincoln Labs. She is a visiting lecturer at MIT, within Nobel Laureate Robert Merton’s “Retirement Finance” class since 2014 and is a case study protagonist at Harvard Business School. Christina sits on the Board of Directors of The Financial Executives Alliance (FEA) Hedge Fund Group, the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association (MIT SBAA), Invest in Girls, the U.S. Non-Profit Boards Committee of 100 Women in Finance, and the Scholarship Committee of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Association. Christina and her Co-Founders have been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 and Boston Business Journal 40 Under 40 lists, and is the Women’s Wealth Forum 2018 Founder of the Year. She holds an S.B. in Management Science from MIT and is a CAIA Charterholder. 

John Radle is the Global Head of Trading for Campbell & Company. He manages seven traders across three geographic regions - Asia, Europe, and North America. He is responsible for global execution for foreign exchange including NDFs, cash equities and derivatives, utilizing high-touch, direct-market-access, and algorithmic methods. He chairs the firm’s Best Execution Committee. John has 30 years of institutional trading experience splitting his time between both the buy-side and the sell-side. John earned a BBA in Finance from Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, TX. He also earned an MBA in Management of Technology from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD.

Asif is an experienced FX Algo Trader who has over 12 years of experience in developing electronic trading platforms. He has a MSc in Artificial Intelligence and has joined BNP Paribas from Citi, where he worked on various initiatives including eFX pricing engines and algorithmic trading. Utilising his experience in artificial intelligence, he has developed and launched Cortex iX (Intelligent Execution) - a cutting edge FX algorithmic execution platform that has been highly acclaimed by clients and industry experts globally.

Steve Reich is the Head of FX and Commodity Liquidity Solutions at GTS Securities. He is responsible for directing GTS’ FX franchise. His initial focus included market making in FX, commodities, metals and futures products. He has also been involved with the execution liquidity for the asset management group.  Before joining GTS in 2013, Mr. Reich ran FX Clearing for CME Group. Previously, he was Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Sales and Business Development for Pivot Solutions, which was acquired by CME in 2010. Before joining Pivot, Mr. Reich was a co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Hotspot FX. Earlier in his career, he held positions at Barclays, HSBC, and Credit Suisse.

Mayra Rodríguez Valladares is Managing Principal of MRV Associates. She is a graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, The Wharton School, and The Lauder Institute of the University of Pennsylvania. She was also a Raoul Wallenberg Fellow at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has over twenty five years of financial regulatory and capital, foreign exchange, and energy markets experience at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, JP Morgan, BTAlex.Brown, and as a financial consultant and trainer. She has published over 100 articles in publications such as American Banker, Bloomberg’s Financial Regulatory Brief, The New York Times, Russian Petroleum, and World Oil. www.MRVAssociates.com.

Mauricio Sada-Paz is Global Head of eFICC Product and Distribution at Barclays, based in London.  He leads the execution of the eFICC strategy across Credit, Foreign Exchange and Rates. Mauricio joined Barclays in July 2018 with over 20 years markets experience.  Prior to Barclays, he spent eight years at Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he was most recently Global Head of eFX Sales and Head of eFICC Sales for EMEA.  Previously, he spent 12 years at Goldman Sachs, initially as a FICC Sales Trader before moving to FX Sales. Mauricio graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University where he received a BS in International Economics.

Sash Sarangi is the Head FX Trader and a Co-Portfolio Manager at F.D.O. Partners, based in Cambridge, MA. He has previously worked as quantitative analyst at Citigroup and Bloomberg. Sash has a PhD in Physics from Cornell University and postdoctoral experience from Columbia University. He is a John Templeton Award winner and has published multiple scientific papers in peer reviewed journals. He is also a co-author of an upcoming book, published by Taylor & Francis, on various aspects of AI.

Robert runs a small start up fund, CC Track Solutions, which is backed by CITIC Capital with 14 people and total AUM of $75 million. The focus of the fund is FX trading systematically, and Robert’s entire career has been focused on FX space starting with his work as a Quant strategist at Goldman. He will be taking part in the Oxford Style Debate ‘With recent underperformance by alpha strategies, now is the time to move to smart beta for better returns in FX’ on the 12th September.

Paul Shahied, CMT, has worked on Wall Street for 20 years with experience in fixed income, equities, commodities, and foreign exchange markets. He began his career on the sell side, working at Merrill Lynch and then Lehman Brothers where he managed the FX e-commerce trading business and was a liquidity provider on the spot desk. He later moved to ITG where he was tasked with starting an FX trading platform for the international trading group. His roles at Fidelity Investments span FX and commodity trading, equity trading, evaluating FX executions across managers, and helping centralize all foreign exchange at the firm from systems & processes to execution & post-trade analytics and TCA.

Holden Sibley is a Managing Director and Head of Americas Efx Distribution within the Macro division of Barclays Investment Bank. Based in New York, Holden is responsible for distribution, marketing, product development and client service for Barclays’ BARX FX electronic trading offering in the Americas region. Prior to assuming this position, Holden served as Head of European Ecommerce for Barclays Capital, based in London, and as Chief Operating Officer of Barclays Capital Ecommerce. Holden joined Barclays in February 2003 after completing an MBA program at INSEAD. Prior to this, Holden was a senior consultant in the Financial Services practice of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young in Atlanta. Holden graduated from Princeton University in 1996 with a degree in Economics and a certificate in Latin American studies.

Jill Sigelbaum is the Head of FXall at Refinitiv, formerly the Financial and Risk Division of Thomson Reuters. Jill has over 25 years of experience in the financial technology industry, innovating the foreign exchange and derivatives markets. As an executive across five start-up firms, Jill is an expert in leading sales growth, business development and product strategy. Prior to joining Refinitiv, Jill was the Head of Foreign Exchange at Traiana, a market leader in credit risk and post-trade processing. Jill is a trusted advisor to the Foreign Exchange community and is a member of the FXPA (Foreign Exchange Professional Association) and sits on the FX committee of the Central Bank of Canada. Jill is also a co-founder of the Women in FX group.

James Sinclair co-founded MarketFactory in 2008 and now serves as executive chairman where he focuses on strategic initiatives. James is also a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee (FXC) sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As a member of the BIS Markets Participants Group (MPG), James co-chaired the Examples Working Group that wrote the examples in the new FX Global Code of Conduct. Prior to founding MarketFactory, James was head of research and strategy for foreign exchange and fixed income at ICAP Electronic Broking. Prior to that, he held a number of positions at EBS since its inception in 1993, including head of Asia/Pacific, head of sales for the Americas, global head of product management and head of research and strategy.  James also worked as vice president at Citibank based in Hong Kong and Tokyo for over 10 years. James earned a BS in engineering from Imperial College London. Outside of MarketFactory, James is treasurer of the Westminster School Foundation in the USA and, is a keen supporter of Yamba Malawi, a charity dedicated to alleviating poverty in Malawi. He is a keen cyclist, a certified US Coast Guard Captain (up to 50 ton vessels), and a skipper at the Manhattan Yacht Club.

Jan Strømme, has extensive experience in e-FX sales / BisDev, liquidity provision and trading, serving at major FX exchanges, DNB Bank, GSA Capital and XTX Markets (EBS/ICAP, ThomsonReuters/FXall), DNB (Den Norske Bank) and hedgefunds, at the very cutting edge of trading solutions, services and technology for the banking and hedge fund industry. Strømme started his career in oil/shipping brokerage, before joining Reuters Transaction Services with remit for Norway and Iceland, later joining EBS in charge of Nordic and Nordic clients globally. Strømme joined his largest client, DNB, to set up one of the first FX HFT desks in 2005, established with developers and quants, creating a pioneering algo-desk within DNB. Strømme also founded a fintech firm specialising in transaction and dealing software solutions for chats and instant messaging (BBG Messaging, Reuters Messaging, MSN etc), utilizing Extended Reg Expressions. Later sold to partnering VC. Strømme had sole global responsibility for Direct Disclosed business from the beginning of the award winning GSA Capital FX team until Strømme exited XTX Markets in the summer of 2017, when he established Alphaplate, a prop trading crypto entity, with 4 other partners (Ex Celeritas/Bluefin Full Stack developer, previous CEO of Renaissance Technologies Europe and 2 sell-side FX market makers).

Paresh Upadhyaya is Senior Vice President and Portfolio Manager of Pioneer Global Multisector Income Fund. He also leads Pioneer Investments’ currency research effort out of Boston and serves as an advisor to the firm’s global fixed income and equity investment staff on currency-related issues. In addition, he helps lead sovereign credit analysis and advises the investment team on sovereign bond investments. Paresh joined Pioneer from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he was Director, Senior FX Strategist – Head of North Americas G-10 FX. Prior to BofA Merrill Lynch, he was a Portfolio Manager and member of the currency team at Putnam Investments, where he participated in actively managing $20 billion in currency investments in currency overlay, fixed income, global asset allocation, and international equity portfolios. Paresh holds a B.S. in Economics and International Relations from Boston University and an M.B.A. in Finance from Boston College.

Daniel G. Viola is a Partner of Sadis & Goldberg LLP and is the Head of the Regulatory and Compliance Group.  He structures and organizes broker-dealers, investment advisers, funds and regularly counsels investment professionals in connection with regulatory and corporate matters.  Mr. Viola has been active in the Blockchain and Virtual Currency verticals since 2014. He is also the founder of the Crypto Asset Webinars and serves as an advisory board member to several ICOs. Mr. Viola served as a Senior Compliance Examiner for the Northeast Regional Office of the SEC, where he worked from 1992 through 1996. During his tenure at the SEC, Mr. Viola worked on several compliance inspection projects and enforcement actions involving examinations of registered investment advisers, ensuring compliance with federal and state securities laws. Mr. Viola’s examination experience includes financial statement, performance advertising, and disclosure document reviews, as well as, analysis of investment adviser and hedge fund issues arising under ERISA and blue-sky laws. After leaving the SEC, Mr. Viola founded VIOCO, Ltd. (“VIOCO”), which provided consulting services to investment advisers and broker-dealers in the field of regulatory compliance, including compliance policy planning and implementation of soft dollar reviews, mock SEC compliance audits, and compliance training for supervisory personnel. VIOCO also served as a consultant to provide mandated corrective consulting to investment advisers that were sanctioned by the SEC. From 1997 to 2002, Mr. Viola served as General Counsel for Andover Brokerage LLC, which was ultimately  acquired by SunGard (NYSE:SDS). Andover was a self-clearing member firm of the NASD, currently known as FINRA and a trading/technology firm that provided direct-access trading, order routing, and brokerage and clearing services to professional traders. From 2002 to early 2006, Mr. Viola served as the General Counsel to the Carlin Financial Group, which was ultimately acquired by RBC Capital Markets, LLC. Mr. Viola then founded his own law firm and eventually merged it into Sadis and Goldberg’s law practice in late 2006.

A successful Financial Technology and Capital Markets Executive for over 25 years with extensive experience in financial services and a wide range of product knowledge, including U.S. Treasuries, Agencies, Mortgage-backed Securities, Municipal Securities, Corporate Credit and Fixed Income Derivatives. I have held significant leadership positions within Investment Banking and Financial Technology firms, focusing on Institutional Fixed Income Sales, Trading and Market Structure. My success has been driven by: ➢ Delivering solid results in leadership roles across business development, sales, marketing and strategy, specializing in Exchange-Traded and OTC Fixed Income products. ➢ Developing and implementing highly effective strategies that generate significant revenue and longstanding client relationships. ➢ Combining a winning blend of strategic acumen, team leadership, communications skills and a collaborative style. ➢ Producing exemplary results in managing the sales process for complex financial services initiatives through hands-on involvement and cross-functional delegation. My specialties Include: Leadership, Financial Product Sales, Sales Strategies, Consultative Sales, Client Relationship Management, Exchange-Traded Futures and Options, OTC Derivatives, Electronic Trading, Fixed Income Cash Products, Institutional Sales, Revenue Growth, Cross Sales, Team Leadership, Collaborative Management Style.

Lisa Seim has traded and sold treasury products for various financial institutions in Austria, Germany and NYC in the mid 80s and 90s. In July of 2011, she realized the markets were lost and stuck between the new regulatory mandates of Dodd Frank regulatory reform and coming to terms with the fact that legacy technologies had little capacity to handle the new regulatory environment. Transparency and managing risk became at the top of everyone’s list. Lisa decided to establish Strategic Exchanges to help financial firms navigate through this new and very difficult path. She now steers financial institutions towards innovative solutions that will help them adhere to the new regulatory mandates. Lisa Seim presently engages over seventeen different firms that address various issues on the way trades are executed, processed, reported and settled within the framework of the new regulatory mandates. Her consortium members currently comprise of data, research and analytics companies, aggregation services and applications, trade surveillance systems, clearing house services, legal services around financial technology applications, collateral and liquidity managements systems along with lightweight, web-based portfolio management solutions. Through roundtable discussions Lisa’s consortium members provide the latest tools to address the mandates as they are enacted.

                                

Melanie Cristi is an Executive Director and Head of Americas FX E-Sales based in New York. Her team is responsible for the sales of Morgan Stanley’s FX electronic trading capabilities to institutional and corporate clients. Melanie joined Morgan Stanley in 2012 and has twelve years of experience in electronic trading in foreign exchange, equities, and futures. Prior to working in electronic trading, she was a management consultant at Accenture.

Andrew brings extensive experience in both the software development and financial technology fields to his role at oneZero. As CEO, Andrew has led oneZero’s growth from a start-up to a global leader in enterprise-level software solutions for participants in the retail forex market. His primary areas of focus are product design, industry and competitive analysis, and managing long term partnerships.

Experienced portfolio manager, strategist and published author with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. Skilled in Asset Management, Equities, Bonds, Investment Strategies, and Capital Markets. Strong finance professional with a MBA focused in Finance, General from University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business.

Jennifer Litwin is responsible for spearheading Greenwich Associates’ relationship management and marketing initiatives with key decision-makers at select priority buy-side institutions and is a frequent speaker at industry and investor conferences. Prior to joining the Firm in 2007, Jennifer was a senior sales-trader on the Synthetic GIC desk at UBS Investment Bank. She began her career as an Associate in the Operations Group at AIG Financial Products Corp. Jennifer is a recipient of Traders Magazine Wall Street Women, A Celebration of Excellence 2012 - Crystal Ladder Award and was elected to the National Organization of Investment Professionals (NOIP) in 2016. Jennifer is also a professional opera singer and earned her Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and Yale University School of Music, respectively.

Jordan Barnett was appointed Global Head of FX Program Trading at BNY Mellon Markets in 2018. A currency market veteran with over 20 years’ experience in FX trading, Jordan heads up BNY Mellon’s rules-based and non-discretionary programmatic trading capabilities. Prior to his current role, Jordan served as BNY Mellon’s Head of FX Spot Trading. He joined the firm in 2015.Jordan’s experience on the buy side is extensive. Before joining BNY Mellon he was a Senior FX Trader at Bridgewater Associates for seven years, and prior to this he was a Trader at investment firm John W. Henry & Company. During his first spell on the sell side of the business, Jordan traded currencies at Bank of America. He started his career with Merrill Lynch, where he was an FX forwards trader for nine years. Jordan has an MBA from Columbia Business School. He is currently based in New York.

Michael Babic runs the Americas Electronic FX sales business at Goldman Sachs. He spent the first years of his career in prime brokerage at Deutsche Bank before moving into electronic sales in 2007 joining FX Marketspace as a sales associate. In 2009, Michael moved to Citibank where he spent the next 5 years on the electronic sales team, building out their distribution business focusing primarily on their single dealer platform and FX algorithms. Michael joined Goldman Sachs in 2014 to lead their electronic effort for the Americas.

Securrency provides blockchain-based financial service infrastructure to banks and investment banks. Securrency’s Compliance Aware Token framework provides the backbone for fast and efficient transactions in a complex global regulatory environment. Securrency provides the most robust platform for the tokenization and trading of securities, an industry expected to transform the banking and insurance industries and exceed 1 trillion USD in asset value in the years ahead. Prior to founding Securrency, Dan served as the Chief Innovation Officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has 20+ years of experience in emerging technology development and finance across government and private sectors. Dan is a software developer and innovator in blockchain, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, process automation, dynamic asset pricing and enterprise architecture. Dan holds a B.S. in Systems Engineering & Economics from the U.S. Naval Academy and a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT.