Trainers
All of our trainers are financial market professionals with many years experience in delivering training courses and seminars.
Stephen Aikin
Stephen Aikin has over 20 years financial markets experience, mainly in derivatives. He has worked at Kleinwort Grieveson, Credit Suisse and SBCI, principally as an equity options specialist. Stephen specialises in relative value trading, exploiting the relationships between financial instruments, principally in the field of interest rates and fixed income. He delivers regular training courses at major banks and is the author of "Trading STIR Futures – An introduction to short term interest rate futures" (published by Harriman House).
Claudio Albanese
Prior to founding Global Valuation, Claudio was a Professor of Mathematical Finance at Imperial College London and a visiting professor at King's College London. Claudio left academia in 2007 and founded Global Valuation to pursue a practical implementation of his research. Claudio has worked as a consultant at major financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch, Natixis, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, Bloomberg LP and Credit Suisse. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from ETH Zurich.
Susanne Arvidsson
Susanne Arvidsson is director of the Lund Institute for Sustainability Impact (LISI) and associate professor in finance and accounting at Lund University. She has extensive research experience in the field of sustainability and sustainable finance and heads several interdisciplinary research projects, including the Enhancing the Value Relevance and Credibility of Sustainability Information (EVRACSI) initiative and the Sustainable Business, Reporting and Assurance (SUBREA) network, involving close to 200 members from companies, governments, authorities, NGOs and senior researchers at both national and international level. Susanne also has considerable experience in executive education, teaching finance and sustainability to various groups, including management teams, boards of directors and Swedish judges. Susanne is chairman of the Swedish Corporate Sustainability Ranking.
Peter Austing
Peter Austing initially trained in mathematics before completing his PhD and several years of postdoctoral research in theoretical physics. Before moving to banking, he was a lecturer in mathematics at St John's College, Oxford. In 2004, Peter moved into investment banking, first at HSBC and then at Barclays Capital, where he managed a small team of quants building derivatives trading models, specialising in foreign exchange. Peter is a regular conference speaker and is particularly known for his work on multi-asset derivatives trading and correlation smile.
Ozlem Bak
Ozlem Bak is a Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at Brunel Business School in London where she teaches courses in operations management, purchasing, and supply chain management. Before entering academia, she worked in the automotive industry for companies including Daimler Chrysler and Hyundai. She received her PhD from the University of East Anglia which was awarded the Emerald Highly Commended Award in the field of Operations Management. Her work has been published in national and international journals such as Supply Chain Management and Production Planning and Control and she is the editor of “Sustainable and Green Supply Chains and Logistics Case Study Collection” (Kogan Page).
Andrew Bevan
Andrew graduated with a first class BA in economics from Reading University in 1978 and was awarded a PhD in international monetary economics from City University in 1986. In 1994, he was appointed Director of International Bond Research at Goldman Sachs in London and then Managing Director in 2000, becoming Head of Global Markets Research producing research and trading strategy for FX, money markets and bonds. He left Goldman in 2005 joining Gavyn Davies's Fulcrum Asset Management as Research Director in May 2006. Andrew is also a part-time lecturer in fixed income courses at the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) Centre, Reading University.
Daniel Broby
Daniel Broby is director at the Centre for Financial Regulation and Innovation at Strathclyde Business School. Previously, he held senior positions in the fund management industry including Chief Portfolio Manager at Nordea Investment Management as well as roles at Silk Invest and Bankinvest. He is the author of several books including 'A Guide to Equity Index Construction' (Risk Books). Daniel has an MPhil in Economics and an MSc in Investment Analysis from the University of Stirling.
Robin Brown
Robin Brown was a founder member of the London Inter-bank Currency Options Market and sat on the BBA/Bank of England ICOM Committee. He has developed an international reputation as a leading edge trainer specialising in areas such as Derivatives and Capital Markets, Risk Management and Treasury Products. Robin has held various positions in Treasury, FX, Fixed Income and Equity Investment Departments at numerous financial institutions, including Head of Private Client Investment Desk for a major Middle Eastern Bank. Here he had responsibility for advising the bank's high net worth clients on asset allocation, stock and bonds selection. He also ran the team that managed order execution for equities and fixed income products in Europe, the Far East and North America. Robin is chief examiner for The CISI Bonds and Fixed Interest Examination and has been commissioned to write A Handbook of the UK Gilt Market which is scheduled for publication in autumn 2013 (Harriman House).
Ernest Chan
Ernest Chan specialises in the development of statistical models and advanced computer algorithms to find patterns and trends in large quantities of data. He began his career working on statistical pattern recognition to projects ranging from textual retrieval at IBM Research. In 1998 he joined the proprietary trading group at CSFB developing statistical models for futures trading, stock pair-trading as well as trading based on earnings revisions, surprises and analyst recommendation changes. He has also worked on projects for MapleRidge Capital Management, Millennium Partners, and MANE Fund Management. He currently runs his own consulting company, E. P. Chan & Associates specialising in the research and development of statistical models and software for trading stocks and futures. Ernie holds a PhD theoretical physics from Cornell University.
Iain Clark
Iain J. Clark has been an quantitative analyst in the finance industry for over 14 years holding positions including head of FX and commodities quantitative analysis at Standard Bank and head of FX quantitative analysis at UniCredit and Dresdner Kleinwort. He has also worked in FX and commodites at Lehman Brothers, BNP Paribas and JP Morgan. Iain is the author of Foreign Exchange Option Pricing: A Practitioner's Guide (Wiley Finance, 2011) and Commodity Option Pricing: A Practitioner's Guide (Wiley Finance, 2014). He holds a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Queensland, an MSc in financial mathematics from Edinburgh University.
Luis Costa
Luis Costa is a Director in the FX and Local Markets Strategy Team at Citi in London. He has been covering the CEEMEA markets, from both hard currency and local currency perspectives, for the last 10 years. Prior to Citi, he worked at Commerzbank and at ING Wholesale Banking on EM Strategy positions. Luis also worked in the buy side, first as a local markets proprietary trader at FleetBoston in Sao Paulo-Brazil and later as a EM structured products trader at Delta National Bank in New York. He holds a Master in Business Administration with specialisation in Finance from Columbia Business School in New York. Luis has also been awarded with the CFA qualification in 2007.
Paul Darbyshire
Paul Darbyshire gained his PhD in Theoretical Physics from King's College London and began his career working has a quantitative analyst and trader at HSBC on the exotic derivatives and structured products desk. He has subsequently been involved in the development and implementation of a variety of trading and risk management platforms for a number of major investment banks around the world. Since 2005 he has been responsible for the analysis and design of cutting-edge algorithms in the development of behavioural finance and decision making models at the University of Oxford. Paul is a director of DarbyshireHampton; an innovative quantitative research, advisory, and consultancy firm specialising in hedge funds and the alternative investment industry.
Piet Delport
Piet Delport (LLB, LLD (Pret), H DipTax Law (Wits)) was a professor in Mercantile Law at the University of Pretoria, South Africa where he taught company law and securities law at post-graduate level. He developed and taught an LLM in Corporate Law that was rated the best in South Africa and in the top 100 in the world for many years. He was co-author and author of seven text books on corporate law and is editor and author of Henochsberg on the Companies Act 71 of 2008, a standard reference work on company law, and has published articles in academic journals on the subjects of corporate and securities law. He served on an advisory committee to the then Minister of Trade and Industry for 23 years and was the chair of the sub-committee on legal practices. He is currently a member of the Companies Tribunal in terms of the Companies Act 71 of 2008. He was chairman of a multi-billion Rand insurance company for five years and is currently a non-executive director. He was for five years also the vice-chairman of a multi-billion Rand medical scheme that is ranked number four in South Africa and is presently the chair of the Remuneration Committee.
Andrew Harvell
Andrew Harvell spent eight years at FTSE Group in London where he was Head of Quantitative Research leading a team developing quantitative based indexes including indexes based on currency pairs, hedge fund strategies, real-time long/short, risk targets and commodities, as well as custom indexes. Previously, he worked at HSBC Investment Bank in the Absolute Returns Trading Strategy Team working on trading strategies using quantitative and technical analysis. He has a BSc (Hon) Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Southampton and is an associate member of both the Society of Technical Analysts and Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.
Anne Hsu
Anne Hsu is an expert in machine learning, data analytics, psychology/neuroscience, and behaviour change. Currently she is a computer science lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London in the Risk and Information Management Group, and specialist advisor to Magpar on AI-related financial investments. She also consults for businesses on AI strategy. Her current research topics include Machine Learning, natural language processing, chatbots & conversational AI, behavioural economics, persuasive-design, wellbeing, health and behavioural change. She received her PhD in Physics and BSc in Mechanical Engineering, both from UC Berkeley.
Doug Huggins
Doug Huggins has spent three decades working in research, trading, and sales at a variety of firms, including Deutsche Bank, ABM AMRO and Citadel. He managed the European fixed income relative value research group at Deutsche Bank in the late 90s, when the group was voted best in its class for three consecutive years by the readers of Global Investor Magazine. He joined ABN AMRO in 2001 as Global Head of Fixed Income Relative Value Research, and subsequently became the firm's Global Head of Hedge Fund Sales. In 2003, he started a proprietary trading desk at ABN, focusing on fixed income relative value opportunities. He continued a career as a relative value trader in the London offices of two global hedge funds: Citadel and Old Lane. Since 2011, Doug has been applying relative value models to the energy and agricultural markets, first as a managing director of Starsupply Commodity Brokers in London and then with his own company, which he co-founded in 2014, Quantitative Market Analysis. Doug has a PhD in financial economics from the University of Chicago.
Malcolm Kemp
Malcolm Kemp is a leading expert in risk and quantitative finance, with over 30 years' experience in the financial services industry. Malcolm holds a first class honours degree in Mathematics from Cambridge University. He is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and an Adjunct Professor and Lecturer in Enterprise Risk Management at Imperial College Business School, London. He is the author of Market Consistency: Model Construction in Imperfect Markets and Extreme Events: Robust Portfolio Construction in the Presence of Fat Tails. Before setting up his own business, Nematrian, in 2009, Malcolm was Head of Quantitative Research at Threadneedle Asset Management, a role that included responsibility for its derivatives, risk management and asset allocation implementation activities. Prior to joining Theadneedle, Malcolm was a partner in Bacon & Woodrow's investment consultancy practice.
Thomas Kirchner
Thomas Kirchner created the first ever event-driven mutual fund in 2003, the Pennsylvania Avenue Event-Driven Fund (PAEDX), now called the Quaker Event Arbitrage Fund (following the merger with Quaker Funds in 2010). As Portfolio Manager, he is responsible for the day-to-day management of the fund. Thomas holds a BSc from King's College, University of London, a Diplome from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He has earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. Thomas is the author of "Merger Arbitrage: How to Profit from Event-Driven Arbitrage" (published by Wiley Finance).
Yoram Lustig
Yoram Lustig has been professionally managing assets since 2002. In 2013, he joined AXA Investment Managers as Head of Multi-Asset Investments UK and Deputy Global Head of Multi-Asset Investments, and has been the lead fund manager of AXA IM Smart Diversified Growth Fund since its launch in April 2014. From 2009 to 2012, Yoram was Head of Multi-Asset Funds at Aviva Investors, leading the multi-asset team and managing a range of multi-billion, multi-asset portfolios, focusing on institutional investors. From 2002 to 2009 he was head of portfolio construction at Merrill Lynch, managing multi-asset discretionary portfolios, focusing on wealthy individuals. Yoram began his career in 1998 as a lawyer, specialising in corporate, financial and commercial law. He is the author of the books "Multi-Asset Investing: A practical guide to modern portfolio management" (Harriman House, 2013) and "The Investment Assets Handbook: A definitive practical guide to asset classes" (Harriman House, 2014).Penelope Lynch
Penny Lynch has been involved in financial modelling for project finance since 1981 when she joined the financial modelling team at Morgan Grenfell. Since then she has built models for projects across many industries, including solar, wind, biofuel, waste-to-energy and geothermal renewables. She later joined the Project and Export Credit advisory team at Chase Investment Bank where she was also responsible for giving training and support in modelling to new team members. She become an independent consultant in 1992 and has since worked on a wide range of modelling assignments in renewable energy for a variety of clients. Penny also wrote the first book in this field, “Financial Modelling for Project Finance” (Euromoney). She has a PhD in mathematical modelling.
Irene-marié Esser
Irene-marié Esser is a Professor of Corporate Law and Governance and Deputy-Director of Postgraduate Teaching at the University of Glasgow. Her research spans doctrinal and empirical approaches, covering the UK, EU and South Africa in the field of corporate governance, company law and corporate social responsibility. She also served as a Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and was, until 2017, a Visiting Professor at the Open University, UK. Since 2020 she is an Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She has been in academia for more than 15 years and was admitted as an Attorney of the High Court of South Africa in 2005. She is on the editorial board of the European Business Law Review and has been the Company Law Convenor of the UK Society of Legal Scholars for the past 3 years.
Simon Moore
Simon Moore spent 13 years working in investment banks in Europe, North America and Asia before founding consultancy MQS . His primary focus was on delivering pragmatic and usable quantitative solutions to colleagues and clients in the equity derivatives and alternative investment fields. He ran the US structuring desk for Commerzbank AG in New York and was US head of financial engineering for Commerzbank. He also headed the global quantitative analysis team at ING Barings in London. Simon is an Honoury Fellow at the University of Manchester.
Trevor Neil
Trevor Neil has been a trader for over 30 years, having become a commodities trader at Merrill Lynch in the mid 1970’s before going on to work at LIFFE giving technical analysis support to floor traders. In 2000 he became head of technical analysis at Bloomberg where he was responsible for training and technical analysis software development. He has served on the board of the UK's Society of Technical Analysts and as principal trainer for The Technical Analyst, has trained the top investment firms and funds throughout Europe. Trevor also delivers the popular ‘Friday Technical Analysis Surgery’ on the Thomson Reuters Webex.
Tony Norfield
Tony Norfield spent 13 years as Global Head of FX Strategy at ABN Amro where he was responsible for producing client research and trading ideas to the bank's proprietary trading desk. Prior to that he was chief economist at Hill Samuel and senior economist at Mitsubishi Bank. Currently he teaches financial derivatives at the INSEEC Business School.
Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson has held various quantitative and structuring positions over the last 20 years, at various institutions including Commerzbank, Goldman Sachs and AIG. Over his career, Peter has developed, modelled and risk-managed a wide range of equity- and credit-based structured products, convertibles and swaps. Peter now runs a boutique quantitative consultancy providing clients with the highest levels of derivatives expertise, advice and consultancy. He holds PhD and BEng degrees from Imperial College, London.
Pedro Rodrigues
Pedro Rodrigues is the Director and Co-Founder of Financial Engineering Solutions, a consultancy company that provides bespoke research and development services. He was previously a Research Associate at the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department in Imperial College London where he conducted research in Quantitative Finance using engineering techniques and worked in a research project with the Multi-Asset team of Schroders. He holds a PhD degree in Computer Science from Imperial College London and BSc and MSc degrees in Computer Science from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He was also one of the directors of the Algorithmic Trading Group, a student led group within the Imperial College Finance Society whose activities comprised teaching and research in Quantitative Finance and organisation of seminars for academics and professionals both in Imperial College London and in the City.
Michael Rosenberg
Michael Rosenberg is a consultant to Bloomberg, where he is responsible for authoring a variety of research reports and for designing a range of FX functionality and global macro/economic analytics. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Michael was Chief Strategist for Harbert Management Corporation's Global Macro Hedge Fund, Managing Director and Global Head of FX Research at Deutsche Bank (1999 to 2004) and Managing Director and Head of International Fixed Income Research at Merrill Lynch (1984 to 1999). He also managed Prudential Insurance Company's global bond portfolio (1982 to 1984) and was a Senior FX/Money Market Analyst at Citibank (1977 to 1982). Michael has taught MBA courses in International Financial Markets at Adelphi University and Baruch College and has authored two books in the field of exchange-rate forecasting: Currency Forecasting: A Guide to Fundamental and Technical Models of Exchange Rate Determination (Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 1996) and Exchange Rate Determination (McGraw-Hill, 2003). He holds an M.A. in economics from Queens College and a Ph.D. in economics from Penn State University.
Ignacio Ruiz
Ignacio Ruiz is one of the few individuals that have specialized in the space of XVA since it started. With over 10 years experience in this area, he has been the head strategist for counterparty exposure analytics at Credit Suisse and the head of equity risk methodology at BNP Paribas. Ignacio is the author of "XVA Desks - A New Era for Risk Management" (Palgrave Macmillan). He has a PhD in Physics from Cambridge University and a "Licenciatura" degree in Theoretical Physics from Complutense University in Madrid.
Christian Schaller
Christian Schaller has 20 years experience in relative value trading having worked as part of the RV team at Deutsche Bank as well as being global head of leveraged investments at ABN Amro. Since 2004 he has consulted privately to financial institutions on the development, training, and management of quantitative research and analysis. He has co-authored the book 'Fixed Income Relative Value Analysis - A practitioner's guide to the Theory, Tools and Trades' (Wiley/Bloomberg Press, 2013) and has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Bonn, Germany.
James Sharpe
James Sharpe has been involved in the financial markets since the late 1970s. His early career was geared towards financial analysis and wholesale lending but from 1979 his role was treasury based. Jim has held positions of chief dealer, trader and foreign exchange sales director at a range of institutions in the US, Japan, the Middle East, Scandinavia and the UK. In recent years he has advised and dealt with high net worth individuals at a leading private bank. Since 2014, Jim has been lecturing at LSBU in global finance and other economics courses at undergraduate and Masters level. He has a Degree in Economics, a Masters in Finance, PCIAM and is a Chartered MCSI. Jim is the author of 'Foreign Exchange: The Complete Deal' (Harriman House, 2012).
Mal Spink
Mal Spink began his professional trading career as a market maker for Nordic Options trading Swedish stock options on the OMX. He later transferred to the New York office to focus exclusively on the recently opened ISE Options Exchange. Subsequently, he has focused on investment management for private clients employing a number of arbitrage related strategies. He now runs a successful merger arbitrage fund in the UK. Having gained his MSc in Financial Markets & Derivatives from London Metropolitan University and the Investment Management Certificate (IMC), Mal went on to complete the Chartered Financial Analyst program in 2006.
Andreas Steiner
Andreas Steiner is a specialist in investment performance and risk management. He has over 14 years of practical experience in investment management having worked for Credit Suisse Asset Management, Rothschild, as well as being Head of Investment Risk Management at LGT in Switzerland. He currently lectures at Zurich University on portfolio theory and related subjects. His latest book, "Advanced Portfolio Analytics - New Methods for Measuring, Analysing and Managing Investment Performance and Risk" is published by Wiley.
Judith Stroehle
Judith Stroehle is a Senior Research Fellow at the Saïd Business School in Oxford and Programme Lead of the Oxford Rethinking Performance Initiative. Judith's research broadly focusses on the role of finance, accounting, and reporting for implementing responsible business. Her recent work explores issues such as the methods, benefits and challenges of non-financial measurement, sustainable investing and accounting, and ESG engagement strategies, and the relationships between diverse sets of frameworks, standards and measures (ESG, SDG, Integrated Reporting, SASB, GRI, Impact Valuation, etc.). She teaches Accounting and Responsible Business and co-established the Oxford Impact Roundtable for sustainability reporting and accounting in 2018. Judith holds a doctoral degree (PhD Europeaus) in Economics and Sociology for which she examined the Auditability of Social Standards in Global Supply Chains at the University of Milan in cooperation with the International Labour Office (ILO). Previous to her research track, Judith worked for several years as international business developer in the German online start-up scene and as a data strategy analyst and consultant for international channel marketing. Judith engages and works with several non-profits, companies and asset managers on their non-financial strategies, reporting and measurement practices.
