Battle of the Quants

Judith Posnikoff, Managing Director, Pacific Alternative Asset Management Company
Judith Posnikoff, PhD is a Managing Director and a Founding Partner of Pacific Alternative Asset Management Company, LLC (PAAMCO), a leading provider of hedge fund portfolios to sophisticated global institutional investors. She is responsible for the evaluation and management of equity market neutral hedge funds in the various PAAMCO portfolios. As a member of the Investment Management Committee, she is involved in all stages of the investment process and specifically focuses on the complex customized portfolios of the firm's Asia/Pacific institutional accounts. She has worked extensively with Asian pension plans on hedge fund investments. Judy is additionally a member of the Account Management Committee.

Pierre Laroche - Managing Director - Investment Solutions, Innocap Investment Management Inc.
Pierre Laroche is Managing Director - R&D at Innocap Investment Management, a joint venture between the National Bank of Canada and BNP Paribas (2007-). His main responsibilities include the development and the implementation of quantitative investment solutions and analysis.

Before joining Innocap, he was the Director - Financial Engineering at Desjardins Global Asset Management (2002-2007) and Associate Professor of Finance at HEC Montreal (1989-2002).

At HEC, he was Director of the Finance Department (1999-2002), he contributed to the creation of the pension fund, he co-founded the Financial Engineering option of the M.Sc. Program and founded (then managed during four years) a genuine trading room, the first in a Canadian university.

Mr. Laroche holds a B.Comm. (1982) and a Ph.D. (1989) in finance from Laval University. During his doctoral studies, he was a visiting student at the University of British Columbia, where he took advanced courses in financial theory and financial derivatives given by the then most famous professors in that field. He is the author or co-author of numerous working papers, articles and three books on derivative instruments, risk management and portfolio management. He was consultant on these topics for many companies (e.g. Hydro-Québec, Vermont Gas Systems, Canadian National Railway, KPMG, Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton), financial institutions (e.g. Desjardins Group, National Bank of Canada, Development Bank of Canada) and governmental entities (e.g. Finance Ministry of Québec, Auditor General of Canada and Auditor General of Québec).

Bernard Lee, PhD, CFA, Visiting Practice Associate Professor and the Deputy Director of the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at the Singapore Management University
Bernard Lee, PhD, CFA, is Visiting Practice Associate Professor and the Deputy Director of the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at the Singapore Management University. He is also the Founder of Hedge Funds and Structured Products Advisors (HedgeSPA.com), a start-up initiative funded by Republic of Singapore Prime Minister's Office (National Research Foundation). Prior to relocating to Singapore at the beginning of 2009, Dr. Lee was a Managing Director at BlackRock in New York City. Dr. Lee is a contributing author to Intelligent Hedge Fund Investing (Risk Books 2004), Sovereign Wealth Management (Central Banking Publications 2007), and Strategic Asset Allocation and Portfolio Construction for Sovereign Wealth Managers (MacMillan 2009/2010). He will be contributing to a forthcoming new book on hedge funds to be published by the CFA Institute in 2010. In 2005, he won the "Intel Best Risk Analytics Initiative of the Year" Award from Incisive Media, the publisher of Risk Magazine. He earned a B.A. degree with a double major in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the School of Engineering at Princeton University, an M.S. degree in computational mathematics from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. from the Centre of Quantitative Finance at Imperial College London.

Michiel Swaak CFA, Managing Director, QIC
Michiel is Managing Director of QIC Quantitative Management and is responsible for the QIC Asia Pacific Market Neutral Fund. Before joining QIC, Michiel was a Founding Member and Associate Director of Macquarie Bank's MQ Asset Management. Prior to this he held a variety of positions in Quantitative Research and Portfolio Management at Aegis Equities Research, AEGON Asset Management, SPF Investment Management, and ABN AMRO. Michiel is a CFA Charter holder and earned an MSc in Financial Econometrics from Erasmus University Rotterdam.

The QIC Asia Pacific Market Neutral Fund is one of only a few funds in the world that invests across the entire Asian region using a systematic investment process. It employs a suite of different stock-selection screens to capture significant alpha currently available in Asia, and does so with low risk via a widely diversified portfolio. This diversification is made possible by the breadth of the Asian markets. Each stock-selection screen is premised on a strong fundamental rationale and works across many markets and in varying environments. The portfolio's market-beta exposure is explicitly managed within tight limits, as are net country and sector exposures.

QIC Limited was established as the investment manager for the Queensland State Government in Australia and commenced investment operations in 1989 and was formally established in 1991. Since then, QIC has grown to be one of the largest institutional investment managers in Australia, with over AUD$52 billion in funds under management as at 30 April 2010 and more than 70 institutional clients.

Thomas J. McMahon, Chief Executive Officer, Singapore Mercantile Exchange
Mr Thomas J. McMahon is Chief Executive Officer of Singapore Mercantile Exchange. Mr. McMahon brings with him over 25 years of industry experience in derivatives and commodities across Asia and the U.S. Formerly, he was the Director of NYMEX Asia.

Mr. McMahon joined NYMEX as Director of Asia after acting as an advisor to the Exchange in its agreement to link NYMEX ACCESSå¨ with the Tokyo Commodity Exchange in 2004. In launching NYMEX Asia, Mr. McMahon brought the established Energy and Metals contracts of the exchange to the Asian business community and instituted a development program for Asia region specific contracts. In September 2005 NYMEX launched Singapore 180 fuel oil swap. This was followed by a 380 bunker swap and the East West Swap, tying the European refiners market to Southeast Asia. In the course of launching the new products Mr. McMahon established good working relationships with the various regional regulatory agencies including the SFC, CSRC, MAS, METI, MOF, FMC and DFSA.

From 1993 to 2003, Mr. McMahon was an owner-operator of Gaslink.Com, focusing on the order execution of natural gas futures and options contracts. He began his career as a member of the New York Cotton Exchange and the New York Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange which is now a part of the IntercontinentalExchange.

He became a member of NYMEX in 1982. In 1984, he served as Vice Chairman of the Petroleum Advisory Committee, prior to the launch of the gasoline futures contract. Mr. McMahon was elected onto the NYMEX board of directors in 1987 and served as Chairman of Natural Gas Advisory and Petroleum Delivery Committee leading up to the launch of the natural gas futures contract.

Lionel Semonin, Managing Partner, Four Elements Capital
Lionel Semonin is the founder of Singapore based Four Elements Capital and the portfolio manager of its flagship ÒEarth ElementÓ commodity fund. The Fund is a long-short systematic fund based on both fundamental and market analytics, the fund invests, through futures, in up to 30 commodities across Energy, Metals and Agriculture. Prior to this Lionel was Global Head of Commodity Investor Derivatives at BNP Paribas and before that had a similar role at JPMorgan where he spent more than 10 years. In particular, Lionel's role encompassed setting up and managing a number of systematic commodity strategies. Lionel held other senior positions during his career including trading, structuring and marketing on different asset classes.

Lionel is a CFA charter holder (2001) and has an MSc (Applied Mathematics and Telecommunications) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland (1995). From 1991 to 1993 Lionel also worked as a teaching assistant.

T-Kiang Tan, Senior Manager Mizuho Securities Co., Ltd.
T-Kiang Tan is Co-head of Prime Services department at Mizuho Securities, where he leads the team on Ultra High Frequency (UHF) trading and product development. T-Kiang has more than 12 years of experience working in the finance industry and is an expert in UHF low latency trading implementation. He started his career working on the buyside of the business at UBS O'Connor developing trading models and developing tick databases for backtesting. To gain a better understanding of corporate risk management, T-Kiang worked within Corporate Risk Management Systems for 3 years at JP Morgan Chase, after which he returned to the trading desk on the sell-side.

T-Kiang has a proven track record of providing clients with the capabilities of trading in Asia. He is most passionate about applying the available technology to UHF trading and searching for new ways to improve the trading environment to reduce latency for clients.

Clients recognize T-Kiang for his in-depth understanding of their requirements and his knowledge in the fast changing market environment in UHF trading. In addition, T-Kiang is known among colleagues and clients for providing UHF clients with the best possible solution in low latency trading services and leveraging his technology knowledge to implement future trading technology platforms.

Prior to joining Mizuho Securities, T-Kiang was a Vice President of Capital Markets Prime Services at Lehman Brothers in Japan. When he is not visualizing innovative solutions for his clients, T-Kiang can be found teeing off on the greens first thing in the morning. He has also developed an inseparable relationship with his iPhone, which keeps all his schedules and photos of his two kids.

T-Kiang earned his M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago and his B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Peter Kambolin, CEO and COO, Systematic Alpha Management, LLC
Peter Kambolin is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Systematic Alpha Management, LLC. He is in charge of general management of SAM and oversees company's trading operations, marketing activities, compliance and research. Mr. Kambolin received his B.A. in Finance from Baruch College (1995), magna cum laude. He worked at Commonwealth Associates, Inc. (RR), Unibank (Operations), Fifth Avenue Research and Advisory Group, Inc. (Equity Research), Utopia Capital Management, Inc. (Portfolio Manager), Phillip Louis Trading (Proprietary Trader), Thor Futures, LLC (Principal) and Thor Capital, LLC (Founder and Principal), before co-founding SAM. Peter holds a Series 3 National Commodity Futures License.

Alan Donoghue, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Nyenburgh, Singapore
Alan Donoghue is based in Singapore as CEO of Nyenburgh Asia, a high frequency algorithmic trading company that specializes in market making primarily on cash markets.

His global market experience spanning two decades, covering a wide range of asset classes & roles has given him the skills necessary for his current role as CEO in Asia.

Being responsible for both trading & corporate strategies, he has engineered its growth from establishing the company in 2006, Nyenburgh now works with all regional exchanges, issuers and institutions to help provide & drive liquidity in their products.

Matthias Rietig, Executive Advisor to the Board, Osaka Securities Exchange
Born in Frankfurt/Germany in 1977, Matthias started his professional career with Deutsche Boerse AG in 1998, first as a trainee and then served in various roles within the group. Matthias left Deutsche Boerse AG in 2003 for a short half year stint with Monex Securities Inc. in Tokyo, one of the leading Japanese online brokers. After returning to Europe, Matthias joined the Global Markets team at Deutsche Bank, covering Euro-bonds and Autobahn trades for the London desk before taking up a role as ECB watcher for the Japanese Ministry of Finance in Frankfurt.

Matthias joined Osaka Securities Exchange in 2006 to facilitate the international business development of the exchange. Since then he actively engages in promoting and marketing OSE's derivatives market as well as the Co-location and remote membership initiatives to traditional and non traditional end users globally.

Matthias studied economics and Japanese studies at the Goethe University of Frankfurt. In 2003 he received a CDG-fellowship grant by the German parliament. Matthias is married with a son.

Manfred Schraepler, Director, Head of Funds, Deutsche Bank AG
Manfred Schraepler is responsible for Funds within Global Markets Structuring at Deutsche Bank AG London. Prior to working for Deutsche Bank, Mr. Schraepler was responsible at Nomura International in London for setting up their UCITS fund platform. Mr. Schraepler studied public administration and political economy in New York and holds a Master in Public International Law and a Maîtrise in Business Law & Accounting in Strasbourg, France.

Bjoern Schwarz is a Founding Partner of NAMIRA CAPITAL
Bjoern Schwarz is a Founding Partner of NAMIRA CAPITAL. He is responsible for Operations and Client Service.

Prior to founding NAMIRA CAPITAL he was a Portfolio Manager and member of the Investment Committee at Infiniti Capital AG. Previously he worked at various financial institutions including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch.

Bjoern holds a dual degree in International Business Administration from European School of Business Reutlingen/ Germany and Universidad Pontificia Comillas (ICADE) Madrid/ Spain. He is also a member of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Association and holds the "Deutscher Börsenhändler" License for dealing on the floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and Xetra.

Giovanni Beliossi, Owner, FGS Capital LLP
Giovanni is Managing Partner at FGS Capital LLP, where he is the CEO and is responsible for portfolio management. Previously he was Associate Director of hedge funds at First Quadrant Ltd, where he set up and was the portfolio manager of its Pan European long/short equity market neutral portfolios, and was responsible for UK-based hedge fund business. He has extensive experience of managing equity market neutral portfolios since 1995, when he joined the firm. Prior to that he was a tenured Research Fellow with the Economics Department of the University of Bologna in Italy, and he has held appointments with BARRA International and Eastern Group Plc. He co-founded the Real Options Group to look at research and applications of Real Options to corporate finance and investments. He is an active member of AIMA (Alternative Investment Management Association) and a Research Committee member of Inquire UK. He is a Board member of the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE). He is the European Chair of the Steering Group of the Investor Risk Committee (IRC) of IAFE working on guidelines for disclosure and transparency for hedge funds. Giovanni is a CFA Charterholder.

Karsten Schroeder
Karsten Schroeder is the CEO of Amplitude Capital and the portfolio manager for the Amplitude Dynamic Trading Fund. He oversees all the key decisions related to product development, trading ideas and strategy for the Amplitude's range of funds. Together with his partners he founded Amplitude Capital in September 2004.

Prior to that he was with McKinsey where he was involved in a number of key Corporate Finance projects involving blue chip European clients. Karsten received his Business Diploma from the HHL in Germany. Growing up in former Eastern Germany, he also lived in the US and Australia.

Karsten started trading Futures and Options at a young age and eventually turned his passion into his profession. He regularly speaks at conferences and appears as a frequent guest on business channels, such as Bloomberg and CNBC.

Martin Kuehrer, PhD, Principal, fin4cast
Martin Kuehrer, PhD, Principal, fin4castDr. Martin Kuehrer is the Ceo of fin4cast. fin4cast develops systematic and purely model driven investment strategies. Prior to joining Siemens in 1994 Dr Kuehrer held a number of positions with prominent engineering companies. Dr Kuehrer has steered the quantitative strategies proposition at Siemens fin4cast from its beginnings and has formed numerous successful partnerships with financial institutions. Dr Kuehrer is a regular speaker at international conventions on asset management and quantitative investment management. Dr Kuehrer has degrees in engineering and business administration as well as a PhD in finance.

Melissa Hill, Managing Principal of Sabre Fund Management
Melissa Hill as Managing Principal of Sabre Fund Management is the firm's senior executive officer. She oversaw the launch of Sabre's first quantitative strategy in 1997, being actively involved in the implementation and global asset raising. Having joined the firm in 1996, she became a member of the Board in March 2000. In 2003 Sabre's Board appointed Melissa to take over the running of the business and she went on to lead the management buyout in 2005. Melissa is responsible for Sabre's overall business strategy and firm direction. She is a member of the Investment Committee which supervises the ongoing development of Sabre's funds and she chairs the firm's Board and Risk Management Committee.

Richard Murphy, General Manager Equity Markets, ASX
Richard has responsibility for development of the ASX equity business, including listing, trading, clearing and settlement services across cash equities, listed funds, warrants and structured products, and equity and index futures and options.

Richard has held a range of positions across ASX listing, trading and derivatives businesses. Before coming to Australia in 1992 he worked for the Financial Times in London.

Rob Passarella, Vice-President, Dow Jones Financial Markets Group
Robert Passarella has spent over 18-years on Wall Street in the gray zone between business and technology. Rob has always focused on leveraging technology and innovative information sources to empower Equity Research and serve clients. A veteran of Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, and Bear Stearns; he has seen the transformational challenges first hand, up close, and personal. Always intrigued by the consumption and use of information for investment analysis, Rob is passionate about leveraging alternative data and news for investment analysis. Robert holds a BBA in Finance from Baruch College and an MBA from the Columbia Business School. He currently works for Dow Jones as Vice President of Dow Jones Financial Markets Group.

Sandeep Tyagi, Chairman and Managing Director of Estee Advisors
Sandeep Tyagi is the Chairman and Managing Director of Estee Advisors, an Investment Management and Advisory firm. Estee Advisors uses computer based algorithms to deliver maximized returns for the level of risk undertaken. He is responsible for setting the firmÕs direction, sustaining a winning culture and developing innovative financial products.

Prior to Estee Advisors, Mr. Tyagi was the CEO of Inductis, a consulting and analytics outsourcing firm that he founded in 2000. He has also worked at Mitchell Madison Group (MMG) and A.T.Kearney.

Mr. Tyagi is a board member of the YPO Delhi Chapter and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi Excellence Foundation.

Mr. Tyagi holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BTech in Computer Science from IIT, Delhi. He lives in New Delhi with his wife and two children.

Kirby Daley, Senior Strategist, Head of Capital Introductions - Asia, Newedge Group (Hong Kong)
Kirby began his career as a trader for the Special Commodities Division of the Pillsbury Company in 1991. He relocated to Japan in 1993, where he worked in the commodity futures markets and as a foreign exchange dealer, before joining Newedge Group (formerly called Fimat Group) in Tokyo as a macro-economic strategist in 2001. Kirby launched a Capital Introductions desk in Asia for the firm in late 2002 and currently handles both his strategist and capital introductions duties out of the Newedge office in Hong Kong, where he has resided since 2005.

Recognized as one of the early predictors of the global financial crisis, Kirby has been featured prominently in the media over the past decade for his views on the global economy, markets and politics, with regular appearances on CNBC, CNN, BBC, Fox Business and other networks globally. Kirby holds a BA in political science, with an emphasis in economics, from the University of Minnesota.

Tobias Hekster
Tobias Hekster has recently started up RVT HK Ltd, a proprietary trading firm which trades Volatility Relationships in a high frequency manner. Previously, Tobias has worked at IMC Trading for over 12 years. He has amongst others traded multiple European products and strategies in Amsterdam, headed the Chicago office and set up their Volatility Arbitrage desk in Hong Kong. Currently, Tobias also teaches in the Finance Trading Academy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Neeraj Maskara, Asia Business Manager, Quant Solutions, Thomson Reuters
Neeraj Maskara is the Asia Business Manager for Quantitative and Event-Driven Trading Solutions at Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters is the largest global technology and market data provider with an end to end solution for quants and automated traders, from hosting facilities, low latency market data feeds to pricing, news and fundamental feeds and analytics across global markets. Thomson Reuters is a leading solutions provider to buy side and sell side market players who are involved in quantitative trading.

Mr. Maskara is responsible for the content and technology solutions offered by Thomson Reuters across Asia for high frequency trading. He has extensive experience working with a range of buyside and sellside quant trading firms/desks across EMEA and Asia. Prior to his role with Thomson Reuters, Mr. Maskara worked for a quant hedge fund based in Switzerland. ÊÊ

Niguel Brooks, Senior Vice President & Head, ÊArchitecture and Infrastructure, Singapore Exchange
Mr Brooks joined the Singapore Exchange (SGX) in January 2009 as a Senior Vice President and Head of Architecture and Infrastructure. His responsibilities include; identifying and implementing transformational initiatives across the exchange as well as the management responsibility for the IT, Telecommunications and Data Centre infrastructure.

Prior to the SGX, Niguel was the trading development and support manager within Markets Technology for the Australian Securities Exchange's (ASX). He was responsible for the technical development and implementation of the Integrated Trading System (ITS), later the management of the SFE trading system SICOM and played a key role in the evolution of electronic trading for the ASX over his 11 year tenure. Prior to this, Niguel's held various technical / network specialist roles during his 11 years with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

Jacob Shin, Managing Director, Stockade Asset Management
Jacob Shin is the Managing Director of Stockade Asset Management, a Singapore-based hedge fund investment advisory focused exclusively on Asian hedge funds and further specializing in trading oriented and non-directional strategies. Prior to Stockade, he served with The Richcourt Group Êwhere he was the Head of Risk Management and Quantitative Analytics. Before joining Richcourt, Jacob was an Investment Officer at the World Bank's Pension Fund in Washington D.C. where he invested in hedge funds globally and across all strategies. He was responsible for the complete investment process and also led quantitative analytics and portfolio monitoring. ÊWhile at the World Bank Jacob co-authored a research paper on hedge fund investing and helped develop the concept of Dynamic Risk Efficient Portfolio Management. Before joining the World Bank Jacob co-founded a software company and worked with several investment and economic research related consultancies. Jacob has an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and a B.A. in Architecture from U.C. Berkeley.

Manvinder Singh, Director, Invenio Commodity Financials Pte Ltd., Singapore
Manvinder Singh is the Director of Invenio Commodity Financials Pte Ltd. Singapore (INVENIO). INVENIO is a part of Olam International Limited Singapore (OLAM). INVENIO launched its first fund, Ektimo Commodity Relative Value Fund (Fund), on 1 July 2010. The fund is based on a quantitative model and is driven by a systemic style that invests in a portfolio of commodity markets. Manvinder has been instrumental in building the trading algorithm and launch of the fund.

Manvinder has more than 16 years of experience in 'Financial Market trading' and 'Corporate Treasury'. His trading experience includes: Market making and volatility arbitrage trading in commodity options; trading in forex and interest rates derivatives and building algorithm based trading strategies.

Manvinder studied for his bachelor of Commerce from Delhi University in 1990 and is a Chartered Accountant from India. He has been with the OLAM group for the past 11 years. He has also worked for Cargill and Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) before joining OLAM.