Presenters

Duncan Wood is the London-based editor-in-chief of Risk.net. He was promoted to the role at the start of 2015, to lead the editorial reorganisation of the website and its print titles. Wood had been editor of Risk magazine since July 2011. He rejoined Risk as European editor in October 2009, having originally worked for Risk and Asia Risk in London and Hong Kong as a writer and researcher between 1998 and 2000.

In the intervening years, Wood was news editor for the Oliver Wyman-founded online start-up ERisk.com. He also worked freelance for six years while living in Germany, with his work featuring in Euromoney, Financial News, IFR, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as Risk magazine and its sister titles. Wood has written about derivatives and risk throughout his 17-year career in journalism. He is a Neal Awards finalist, and has won Incisive Media's journalist and editor of the year awards.

Lukas Becker is the derivatives desk editor for Risk.net. His topics of interest include over-the-counter derivatives pricing, collateral management, market infrastructure and legal risk. He is based in London. He was previously the Europe, Middle East and Africa editor of Risk magazine.

Mauro Cesa is quantitative finance editor for Risk.net, based in London. He leads the team responsible for the publication of quantitative research across all brands of the division. The section of Risk.net he manages, Cutting Edge, publishes peer-reviewed papers on derivatives, asset and risk management, and commodities.
 
Mauro holds a degree in economics from the University of Trieste and a masters in quant finance from the University of Brescia.

Rob Mannix is the desk editor for investment, covering systematic investment strategies from quant funds to factor investing. He was previously responsible for Risk.net’s insurance coverage.

Based in the London office, Rob is interested in developments in the use of new types of data, the application of machine learning in investment, and research into systematic sources of return in markets. 

Rob joined Infopro Digital (then Incisive Media) in 2008, having previously worked at Euromoney Institutional Investor, covering legal and regulatory issues affecting capital markets.

Prior to joining Risk, he reported on the futures and foreign exchange industries for Dow Jones' Financial News and the Euromoney group of publications. Osborn holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Warwick.

Giuseppe Nuti is the head of machine learning & AI for UBS’s Global Markets. The team is focused on a range of problems: from recommendation engines to optimal execution on behalf of UBS’s clients. The objective is to explore novel uses of ML in applications such as recommendations systems to match clients with specific UBS’s trading axes, anomaly detection for high-throughput, noisy systems, and optimal execution where venue micro-structure morphs order quality.

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 eighteen 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 U.S. Rates Trading desk within FRC, 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 is an adjunct professor at Cornell where he teaches a course on ML applied to trading in FX, Rates & Crypto. Previously, 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 and Bayesian formulation of standard Machine Learning techniques.

Giuseppe currently lives in Larchmont (NY) where he spends most of his free time enjoying his young family and dog.

John Estrada is head of eMacro at Credit Suisse.  The team specialize in pricing very large trades and rely heavily on recent advances in neural networks and novel hedging strategies to maintain a market leading product.  John has been at Credit Suisse since 2011 working previously at BNP, Sun Trading, and Lehman Brothers in a variety of roles.  John earned a PhD in atomic physics at MIT working at CERN before his career in finance..

Sandrine Ungari is currently Head of Cross-Asset Quantitative Research team and Deputy Head of the Global Quantitative Research team at Société Générale. The Quantitative Research team is active in risk premia strategies, derivatives and structured products, portfolio risk modelling, and provides research to investors worldwide. The group has been recognised as a market leader in quantitative research, and was ranked #1 in the Extel survey in the Quantitative Strategies category. Sandrine joined Société Générale in 2006. Prior to that, she worked as a quantitative analyst at HBOS Treasury and at Reech Sungard in London. She is a graduate of ENSTA (Paris) and hold a Master's in Quantitative Finance from Paris VI University. She is a guest lecturer at University Paris Diderot.

Nick is Managing Director and Global Head of Derivatives Clearing at JPMorgan Chase.  In his role Nick oversees J.P Morgan’s Listed and OTC Clearing and Intermediation business; this includes exchange traded futures and options, OTC rates and credit products and FX prime brokerage.

Nick is a 20 year veteran of J.P. Morgan, with extensive trading, risk and operational management experience. Prior to his current role, Nick was head of EMEA Emerging Markets Rates trading from 2010 to 2015 where he built what was widely acknowledged to the street leading franchise.  Before that he held senior risk positions across the region including a period as Treasurer of JP Morgan Moscow. 

Nick is currently Chairman of the Board of the Futures Industry Association

Nick graduated in 2000 with a BA (Hons) degree in Business Management from Nottingham Trent University

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

Ulrich Karl is head of clearing services at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), with responsibility for leading ISDA’s global clearing strategy. This includes issues related to central counterparty (CCP) risk management (resilience, recovery and resolution), as well as clearing mandates (for products and counterparties), clearing access, capital charges for CCP exposures and related topics. 

Before ISDA, Ulrich worked for HSBC, where he most recently served as co-head of CCP risk in the global markets division. While at HSBC, Ulrich served as the industry chair for ISDA’s clearing, risk and capital working group.

Ulrich holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from Technische Universität in Darmstadt. 

William C. Thum is a Principal of The Vanguard Group in Valley Forge, PA, and Global Head of the Capital Markets Legal and Regulatory Practice Group.  Mr. Thum formerly chaired the Investment Company Institute’s Derivatives Market Advisory Committee as well as the Steering Committee of SIFMA’s Asset Management Group, and speaks at ISDA, SIFMA, ICI, FIA and other conferences.  He has written numerous articles on derivatives issues and works with global regulators, trade associations and service providers in developing the new global architecture and regulatory framework for derivatives.

Prior to joining Vanguard in 2010, Mr. Thum was a partner with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP where he concentrated on derivatives regulatory issues and trading agreements.  From 1998 to 2007, he was head of institutional securities documentation at Morgan Stanley.  Previously, he held similar positions at UBS and BNP Paribas in New York and at Kleinwort Benson in London and was involved in the drafting of the foundational derivatives master agreements and product definitions.

Mr. Thum received his JD from The American University, Washington College of Law and his BA in International Relations and Economics from Bucknell University.  He is admitted to the bar in New York and Pennsylvania.

Serge Tabachnik is head of research for LOIM’s Multi-Asset Group. Prior to joining in December 2018, Serge was CEO and founder of Antares Technologies, an investment company seeded by Paloma Partners, partially sold in 2017/18 to Two Sigma Investments.

Serge started his investment career at Amaranth in 2003, as a senior risk strategist, in charge of capital allocation and quantitative modeling for L/S equity and statistical arbitrage portfolios. In May of 2006, he moved to CFM (Capital Fund Management) as head of Yield Arbitrage.

Prior to his career in finance, Serge was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University’s Department of Astrophysical Sciences and lectured at Oxford University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Oxford University and a master’s degree in Theoretical Physics from both EPFL and École Polytechnique in Paris. He currently lectures as part of the financial engineering department at University Paris 2.

Kari Vatanen is the Chief Investment Officer at Veritas Pension Insurance Company (AUM EUR 4 billion). He is responsible for the whole investment management and asset allocation function of the company. In his previous roles, Kari worked as a head of cross asset derivatives as well as a chief risk officer in Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company, and as a quantitative analyst in various investment organizations. He has spent over 10 years trading derivatives on the equity markets, rates, FX and commodities, and by developing alternative risk premia strategies. Kari holds a MSc in Engineering Mathematics from Helsinki University of Technology and a MA in Philosophy from University of Helsinki. He is a CFA Charterholder and holds the Financial Risk Manager (FRM) certification. He has been a speaker at several international quant and derivative conferences and written articles on risk management and alternative risk premia investing.