Conference Chairman

Bob Giffords
Banking and Technology Analyst

Bob Giffords, is an independent analyst and consultant for the European banking sector with over 25 years experience in financial technology. This included major engagements for bank outsourcing, business process re-engineering, branch automation, multi-channel architectures, product factories, credit cards, payments, treasury and securities trading, governance, risk management, and IT best practice in several European countries.

With degrees in Mathematics from the University of California, and economics from Cambridge niversity, Bob carried out post-graduate studies in Germany and the US. In his early career he developed software in the aerospace and technology sectors, followed by a long career in project management and technology consulting, most of which was as an independent analyst.

Adam Toms is a Managing Director and Co-Global Head of Electronic Trading within the Nomura Equities Division. Adam joined Nomura as part of the acquisition of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. On joining Lehman in 2000 he was a member of the Global Portfolio Trading team and was subsequently appointed head of sales in 2004. In 2005 Adam’s responsibilities were expanded to incorporate the electronic sales teams in parallel with the launch of the direct access channel to the LMX algorithmic trading suite. Prior to joining Lehman Brothers Adam worked for Barclays Global Investors (buyside) where he was a member of the central dealing desk team executing global equities, derivatives and commodities. In addition, he specialised in index change strategy and was also a member of the team tasked with launching the first European Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) for the iShares brand. Today Adam is Co-Global Head of the Electronic trading channels that Nomura offers globally, including Nomura’s ultra low latency DMA service NXT Direct, ModelEx algorithmic trading platform and NX dark pool.

Benjamin Stephens
Quantitative Prime Brokerage & Electronic Trading Origination
Nomura

Ben Stephens is responsible for originating new business for Nomura’s industry leading NXT product suite providing high frequency trading clients with ultra-low latency market connectivity, co-location, market data and quantitative prime brokerage services. Prior to joining Nomura’s electronic trading and prime brokerage origination team in 2010, Ben worked for Bank of America Merrill Lynch in a similar position and has an MBA from London Business School.

Bart Lijnse,    
Managing Director,
Nyenburgh

Bart Lijnse is managing director of arbitrage trading firm Nyenburgh in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is part of the firm’s board of directors and holds final responsibility for the firm’s arbitrage trading and IT. Prior to his appointment at Nyenburgh in 2000, Lijnse worked several years as a derivatives and structured products trader at Mees Pierson. Lijnse holds a master’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.

Fred Pedersen,
Business Development,
 Vincorex

Fred is currently in charge of operations and business development of Vincorex.
He has extensive experience of launching and supporting the growth of HFT activities in several countries and continents.
He previously launched marketing activities for a market-neutral equity hedge fund in Switzerland. He has a total of over eight years of alternative investment industry experience. Fred spent more than five years working for Linedata Services in London, most recently as a Commercial Manager with a strong focus on alternative investment industry. He graduated from Concordia International University Estonia in Tallinn. 

Tobias Preis,
Managing Director,
Artemis Capital Asset Management

Dr. Tobias Preis is founder and CEO of Artemis Capital Asset Management GmbH, a proprietary trading company, which also provides tools for big data analytics. Dr. Preis leads academic research in complex systems and big data at Boston University (USA) and ETH Zurich (Switzerland).

www.tobiaspreis.de

Andrew Kumiega,
Adjunct Professor,
Illinois Institute of Technology

Andrew Kumiega has applied his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering to research positions in both the manufacturing and the financial industry over the last 20 years. He has held multiple Director level positions in financial trading firms responsible for front office financial engineering. He currently works for a proprietary trading firm. Dr Kumiega is an Adjunct Facility member at Illinois Institute of Technology. His industry research interests include: implied volatility models for derivatives, pricing models for convertible bonds, multi-factor stock selection models, credit analysis, and project management for finance.
Dr. Kumiega is the co-author of Quality Money Management along with multiple journal articles. Dr. Kumiega holds a B.Sc. Engineering Management from the University of Illinois, Chicago, a M.Sc Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois, Chicago, a Ph.D.in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois, Chicago and a M.Sc. Finance from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Valerie Bannert-Thurner, PhD,
Managing Director,
FTEN, A NASDAQ OMX Company

Valerie is Executive Director of FTEN’s European operations. Valerie is responsible for adapting FTEN’s business model to the European trading community, establishing strategic business and technology partnering arrangements, identifying and championing new requirements into product development, and increasing FTEN’s leadership and quality of service across Europe. Prior to joining FTEN, Valerie served as European Managing Director for Skyler Inc. While at Skyler, she was in charge of developing the business model, strategic partnerships, technology licensing, product positioning, and marketing, including public relations, where she established Skyler as an industry thought leader. Prior to Skyler, Valerie authored articles on finance and technology, published a book on strategic acquisition management, lectured at Cambridge University and the University of California, and spoke at several Industry conferences worldwideShe has a B.S.M.E., M.S. and Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich.

Brian Franzen,
CTO,
Eagle Seven Trading

Brian Franzen is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Eagle Seven, a proprietary trading firm based in Chicago.  As CTO, he is responsible for the firm’s overall technology strategy, systems architecture and technology delivery.  Mr. Franzen is also a member of the FIA Principal Traders Group and serves on the FIA IT Board of Directors

Chris Skinner,
CEO,
Balatro

Bob Fuller,
Director and Chairman of the MiFID IT Sub Group
Fixnetix                 

Bob was Chief Executive Officer of Equiduct, an organisation created to provide MiFID compliant trading services and equity best execution on its Belgian regulated pan-European electronic exchange. As CEO, he was responsible for driving Equiduct's phased roll-out plan and developing a broad range of service propositions to help European financial institutions via its own Pan-European regulated exchange or as a white label product to systematic internalisers or financial institutions that want to operate their own trading facilities.
Prior to Equiduct, Bob was Director of IT Strategy at Dresdner Kleinwort (DK), where he focused on infrastructure, exchange connectivity, Swift connectivity and centrally-cleared products including exchange-traded derivatives, equities and bonds. In addition to his work at DK, Bob was also co-chair of the IT sub group for the MiFID Joint Working Group set up to evaluate MiFID legislation and its impact across Europe.
Bob is Chairman of the MiFID IT Sub Group to date and contributes heavily to the regulatory community in London and beyond.

Bertrand Savatier,
Founder and CEO,
Numbers 

Victor Lebreton
Managing Director
Quant Hedge

Hendrik Klein
CEO
Da Vinci Invest 

Hendrik Klein is an expert in Investment Strategies like Relative Value, Event Driven and Global Macro Strategies, alternative investments and the Head Portfolio Manager since 2004 at Da Vinci Invest AG, an independent asset manager, based in Zurich, Switzerland, which runs their own successful Event Driven hedge fund as well.
He started his career as a derivatives trader at MTH Midas Trading House from 1996 to 1997, which became the largest trader on the DTB at that time. He subsequently held trading and brokerage positions at Fimat International Banque S.A. (1997) and Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg (1998 to 2000), before becoming the Head of Trading and a director and partner of Frohne & Klein Wertpapierhandelshaus GmbH in 2000. He held this position until 2004, during which time he specialised in listed options trading on EUREX.
Mr Klein holds a degree in Business Administration from the University of Mittweida.
 www.davinci-invest.ch, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it +41 41 511 8340.

Jasper Jorritsma,
Policy Officer,
Securities Markets Unit, DG Internal Market and Services

Andrew Bowley,
Managing Director, Head of Electronic Trading Product Management,
Nomura

Peter van Kleef,
Chief Executive Officer,
Lakeview Arbitrage International
Prior to his role at Lakeview, Peter managed significant hedge fund type investment portfolios and quantitative trading departments for among others Cooper Neff, Salomon Brothers, HypoVereinsbank and Credit
Lyonnais. He has over ten years of experience in the development and
running of sophisticated automated trading operations. He holds a MBA
degree from the Owen Graduate School at Vanderbilt University,
Nashville, USA. He is a frequent speaker on complex arbitrage strategies
with a focus on volatility arbitrage and high frequency algorithmic trading. He is also a well known consultant to the investment community with regards to trading, risk management, operational and strategic issues.

Donal O'Sullivan,
VP Product Management
Corvil
Donal has over 15 years experience developing and creating products in the high performance network and infrastructure management space. He joined Corvil in 2001, and was appointed to head up product management in 2006. Donal works closely with Corvil’s customers to achieve their low-latency objectives and maximise the performance of their trading and market data infrastructure. His team collaborates closely with customers and prospects, the sales team, development team, and industry analysts to ensure the Corvil product is aligned with customer needs while maintaining its strong reputation for technical innovation.  Donal is named co-inventor on several Corvil patents.

Michal Sanak,
CTO,
RSJ Algorithmic Trading

Axel
Pierron, Sr. VP,
Celent

Tim Rowe,
Trading Platforms and Settlement Policy,
FSA

Nikolaj Hermann
CTO
Fiberblaze

Nikolaj Hermann is co-founder and CTO at Fiberblaze. He has been in
charge of the development of the complete product portfolio at
Fiberblaze, including all 10 GigE FPGA based Network Interface Cards.
The network interface cards are now being used as the state-of-the-art
choice at many High Frequency Trading sites worldwide. Before Nikolaj
founded Fiberblaze in 2008, he worked in the electronics and
telecommunication industry for more than 10 years and holds a degree
in physics