Dennis Cox is CEO of Risk Reward Limited, a strategy and risk consultancy for the financial services industry, as well as being a CEO or director of a number of other companies. He was formerly Director, Risk Management, at HSBC Operational Risk Consultancy and Director, Risk Management at Prudential Portfolio Managers Limited, having spent 12 years in practice with Arthur Young and BDO Binder Hamlyn. A fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and also of the Chartered Securities and Investments Institute (CISI), among a range of external interests, he was a Council member of the ICAEW, together with being Chairman of the Risk Forum for the CISI. Dennis also represented the public interest in the regulation of the Institute of Actuaries for financial service matters.
About the Contributors
Asif Ahmed was Director in the ALM Group at Citigroup. He was advising Citigroup’s clients on risk management since 1999. His breadth of experience ranges from structuring optimal yield-enhancing strategies for the securities portfolio to recommending optimal financing structure for the balance sheet, all within the relevant IFRS and regulatory constraints. Since 2003, Asif has been focusing on ALM issues for banks and corporate pension funds. Prior to working for structured products at Citigroup, Asif was working in derivatives sales for Bear Stearns. Asif trained as a chartered accountant, has an MBA from London Business School and a BSc in Management Science from London School of Economics.
Roger Bach, after graduating from Leeds University, spent 10 years at Ernst & Young, where he was a Senior Manager in the Financial Services Group. He then joined the Pershing division of DLJ where he spent the next 13 years as Managing Director and Chief Administrative Officer, responsible for finance, compliance and risk. He then became the CEO at Henyep Investment (UK) Limited, a commodities and foreign exchange broker in London. .
David Blackmore, ACIB, MSI, and MIMgt, joined MHA in 2005 as a senior executive, following a 34-year career in banking in the City of London, including 18 with HSBC (Midland Bank). He has also held a number of high profile MLRO and compliance officer roles with foreign bank subsidiaries and branches operating in the UK. David is an Associate of the Institute of Internal Auditors—UK, and has served for several years on their banking and finance special interest group. He holds a BA Politics degree from Leicester University.
David Breden was Managing Director of HSBC Operational Risk Consultancy and the architect of OpRisk Modeller, a scenario-based commercial risk mapping tool developed by HSBC to meet the needs of the Basel II AMA quantification requirements. Previously he worked for NatWest for over 20 years in both England and Spain and developed and implemented an operational risk management system for the Spanish retail network. He has been involved in operational risk management since 1995 and is a Fellow of the Institute of Operational Risk.
Aaron Brown was an Executive Director in risk methodology at Morgan Stanley and the author of The Poker Face of Wall Street (Wiley 2006). He has worked on Wall Street for 25 years as a quant, trader, portfolio manager, head of mortgage securities and risk manager. He holds degrees in Applied Mathematics (Harvard) and Finance and Statistics (University of Chicago). He is a regular columnist for Wilmott quantitative finance magazine, serves on the editorial board of the Global Association of Risk Professionals and has been elected to the National Book Critics Circle.
Stuart Burns was Head of Economic Capital and Model Risk Management at Standard Chartered Bank. He is responsible for overseeing risk management in over 50 countries in the Asia Pacific Region, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the UK, and the Americas. His main responsibilities include coordination of stress testing across portfolios and risk types, as well as leading the group’s model validation team. Stuart joined Standard Chartered in November 2004 from RBS Financial Markets, where he was responsible for developing the credit models for Basel II.
Angela Caldara formerly working in the finance area of VTB Bank Europe plc, involved in the project regarding the implementation of the new Midas Plus software with particular emphasis on product accounting and all aspects of reporting requirements. She previously worked for Unicredito Italiano in the finance area, where her responsibilities included all aspects of taxation. She was involved also in project management: for example, Y2K and the introduction of the euro. Angela previously worked for Lloyd’s of London, where her responsibilities included the registration of Lloyd’s brokers when Lloyd’s of London was self-regulated. She is a chartered accountant, a chartered secretary and a member of the Chartered Insurance Institute.
Craig Cohon has worked with a dozen Fortune 100 companies. Prior to this, Craig had a 14-year executive-level career at The Coca-Cola Company. He was the first employee to live in Russia and started their operations in the Soviet Union in 1990 and finished his first career by serving as Deputy Division President for the Northwest Europe Division, a US$2bn operating unit. In 1993, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Economics from Moscow International University. In 2000, the World Economic Forum named him “A Global Leader for Tomorrow.” In 2003, he was asked by the UN to participate in a high-level commission on International Development. He has been featured in the FT, News Night, the New Statesman, National Post in Canada and the Wall Street Journal. You can reach him at [email protected]
Jennifer Courant was the Managing Director and Head of Credit Risk Model Development of Citigroup Risk Architecture. She has responsibility for the lifecycle development of the credit risk models used by Citigroup to generate probability of default estimates for its wholesale customers, including the analytical framework, systems architecture and model support for 3,000 global users. Jennifer joined Citigroup in 1997 in New York. Prior to joining Citigroup, Jennifer was a real estate economist at AEW Capital Management, Boston, MA. She has a BS in Economics from Saint Vincent College and has completed coursework toward a PhD in Economics at Boston College.
Errol Danziger, BA, LLB, LLM, is the Principal of Danziger Structured Finance, which researches, develops and markets innovative structured financial solutions for investment banks, major corporates and high net-worth individuals. He is a barrister and a former Big Four tax partner, and he publishes widely and lectures to professionals and executives on tax, derivatives, and financial structuring and planning.
Thomas Day was Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering for SunGard’s BancWare business unit, responsible for product management, financial engineering, direction and strategy for the company’s risk management solutions. At BancWare since 2005, Thomas has over 15 years of banking experience, including seven with the Federal Reserve System. Prior to joining SunGard, Thomas was Senior Vice President of Risk and Strategy at Amsouth Bancorporation. He has worked for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, SouthTrust Bank and Barnett Bank, and as a coordinator for national level market and liquidity risk supervision for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Pontus Eriksson has worked in several positions within SunGard over the past eight years including development, project management, and product management. He is currently global product manager for credit and interest rates at SunGard FRONT ARENA. Pontus has a Masters in Engineering Physics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Ákos Felső vályi was a Managing Director at Citigroup. He is heading an area dedicated to analyzing and modeling the global credit losses at Citigroup. He joined Citigroup in 1987, working in the Credit Card Division and building statistical models for direct marketing. He has been in risk management since 1991 in various capacities. He holds an MS in Applied Mathematics from Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary.
Bryce Ferguson was a Managing Director and Head of the Credit Risk Analytics Unit of Citigroup Risk Architecture. She is responsible for rating policies and approval of rating processes, calculation of loss-given default and exposure at default, and development of statistical models used to assign risk ratings, provide early warnings and derive credit risk capital. These responsibilities cover Citigroup’s wholesale credit portfolio. Bryce joined Citibank in 1977 as an economist and covered the restructurings of sovereign and private sector debt of several major Latin American countries. During the late 1980s and 1990s,
Bryce worked as a consultant to various businesses in Citicorp, including the Office of the Chairman. Bryce has a BA in History/Economics from Grinnell College and completed coursework toward a PhD in International Finance and Trade at New York University.
Rod Hardcastle was Head of Credit Risk Regulation in the Wholesale and International Banking Division of LloydsTSB Bank plc. Over the course of a 17-year career as banker and banking consultant, he has worked in New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Continental Europe, and the UK for a variety of banks in roles spanning retail and wholesale banking, and covering strategy, operations, relationship management and, particularly, credit risk and Basel II. Rod holds a Bachelor of Business Studies (Banking and Finance) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Banking from Massey University, New Zealand and an MBA from the Cranfield University School of Management, Cranfield, UK.
Markus Krebsz is a freelance management consultant. He is currently acting as Subject Matter Expert for Rating Agency and Securitisation, focusing on covered bonds, MBS, ABS, synthetic structures, Basel II and regulatory reporting. At the time of writing his chapter for the book, he worked in Fitch Ratings’ corporate and infrastructure securitisation team. Prior to joining Fitch in 2004, Markus worked for over 10 years for German banks in retail and corporate banking, project management, software development and risk management. He is a member (MSI) of the Securities and Investment Institute, of the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA) and of the Chartered Institute of Bankers.
Dilip Krishna was Director of the Enterprise Risk Management practice (Americas) at NCR Teradata. He held the role of Chief Architect of the Basel II program at a major Canadian bank and has had several implementations of securities trading solutions and Internet-based trading platforms. He has also consulted on risk management with several North American financial corporations. Dilip has authored numerous articles on risk management and implementations and has also spoken on the topic in diverse settings. He holds CFA and FRM designations as well as degrees from the Ohio State University and the Indian Institute of Technology.
Michael Mainelli leads Z/Yen, the City of London’s leading think-tank which counts every global investment bank as a client. Michael started as a research scientist, then became a partner in a leading accountancy firm directing consultancy work. He is a qualified accountant and computer specialist with a Government degree from Harvard, mathematics and engineering at Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from the London School of Economics. Michael is Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Commerce at Gresham College. Michael advises and writes widely on compliance, risk and regulation. Michael’s humorous risk/reward management novel, Clean Business Cuisine: Now and Z/Yen, was published in 2000.
Frank H. Moxon, CF, FSI, FIMM, FEI, has over 17 years’ experience as a corporate financier. Formerly head of corporate finance at Williams de BroÎ, he now heads up the natural resources team at Evolution Securities. To date he has successfully completed more than 115 corporate finance transactions raising over US$1.3bn in new funds. Among other things, he is a Fellow of the Securities and Investment Institute, Chairman of its Corporate Finance Forum and a Fellow of the Energy Institute.
Ralph Nash joined Barclays in November 2006 as the Operational Risk Director in Business Banking Risk. Prior to this, Ralph was the Director of Group Operational Risk at AXA UK and the Head of Group Enterprise Risk Methodology and Policy at RBS. He also has earned experience at the Bank for International Settlements, where he worked on the operational risk components of Basel II, the Bank of England and the House of Commons. Ralph holds an MA in Geography from Cambridge University.
Krishnan Ramadurai was a managing director in Fitch Ratings’ Financial Institutions department, where he is responsible for special projects for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. His duties include analyzing, monitoring, and publishing research on several subjects spanning the new Basel II framework, credit derivatives, IFRS, and operational risk. Before joining Fitch in 2001, Krishnan worked for HSBC for 12 years. He held a variety of jobs in operations, corporate banking, credit risk and training in India, the Middle East and the UK. A graduate from Xaviers Institute of Management, India, Krishnan holds an Economics Masters from Madras Christian College University.
Diccon Smeeton was currently responsible for European Hedge Fund Risk at ABN AMRO in London. Following a career as a hotel manager in East Africa, he returned to the UK and spent some years employed as a Counterparty Credit Analyst at Kleinwort Benson in London, prior to moving to Lehman Brothers, as a Hedge Fund Credit Analyst. He then moved to Deutsche Bank, where he spent time in both the London and New York offices, specializing in Hedge Fund Risk. He joined ABN AMRO in 2004.
Anthony Smith, FCII, APFS, FCoI, Chartered Insurance Practitioner, is a Director of AJS Consultancy Services providing compliance consulting to product providers and retail intermediaries. He is the organizer of the Annual European Financial Directives Conference and regular conference speaker. Anthony is a board member of the Association of Professional Compliance Consultants (APCC), a trade body representing over 100 consultancy firms with the explicit purpose of raising standards in compliance consultancy. He has worked in financial services since 1989 as a compliance manager of financial promotions and complaints handling and Pensions Review Manager for the only large network not to be fined by PIA for pensions review failures.
Nina Sodha currently works as a London-based Vice President within the Strategy, Planning and Analysis team of a major international investment bank. Her role primarily covers offshoring within the research and finance functions, assisting existing and new migrations to India. Prior to this, she worked at Abbey as a Strategy Manager and worked on corporate-wide projects such as offshoring, product development and business strategy. Her career started at PricewaterhouseCoopers within financial services audit followed by consulting. She has written numerous articles on offshoring within industry journals and publications. She has also coordinated a report for the ICAEW in 2004 on outsourcing and offshoring and organized a conference on the same topic featuring prominent speakers. Nina has a BSc in Economics from LSE and an MBA. She is also a qualified Chartered Accountant and Certified Management Consultant.
Paul Sweeting graduated from the University of Bristol with a degree in Economics before qualifying as a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and subsequently gaining a master’s degree in Actuarial Science. Paul has since held a number of roles in both consultancy and fund management, and was a Director at Fidelity Investments, based in its Portfolio Strategies Group. Here, he designs a variety of innovative solutions for institutional and retail investors. Paul is also a CFA charterholder, a regular contributor to the pensions and investment press, and has produced a number of papers on pensions and investment topics.
Gary van Vuuren is a Senior Director in the Financial Institutions Special Projects Group of Fitch Ratings. As a quantitative analyst he holds responsibility for overseeing quantitative aspects of projects which require mathematical or statistical input. Gary began his career in nuclear physics at South Africa’s Atomic Energy Corporation before moving on to market risk at ABSA Bank, Johannesburg, Old Mutual Asset Managers in Cape Town and Standard Bank in London. He was head of the Quantitative Analysis Group at Ernst & Young before he moved to Fitch in 2006. He is a GARP-accredited Financial Risk Manager.