Biographies

David Wright

David M. Wright joined the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as Group Vice President and Deputy in the Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation (BS&R) in February 2007. He oversees the Risk Monitoring and Analysis Group, which provides a wide range of support for the Reserve Bank's supervision function including risk coordination, economic capital analysis, surveillance, applications and enforcement.

Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Wright was the Associate Director over the risk management supervision function at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In that capacity, he was responsible for undertaking and coordinating risk management supervision initiatives; developing supervisory policies and examiner guidance for evaluating credit, market, operations and compliance risks, and the overall adequacy of bank risk management systems; and keeping the Board of Governors and System supervisory personnel informed as significant risk trends, issues or potential concerns emerged.

Prior to joining the Federal Reserve in 1991, Mr. Wright was Vice President at First Boston Corporation where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, corporate valuations, and the mortgage finance industry. He received a B.A. from Wake Forest University and an M.B.A from the College of William and Mary.

Brian Redican

Brian Redican joined Macquarie in 1999 and is a Division Director and Senior Economist. Macquarie’s Economics team was ranked Number One for Australian economic research in the 2007 Peter Lee/Greenwich survey of institutional investors.

Brian provides strategic advice to those businesses which are actively pursuing investment opportunities within the region, undertakes regular briefings for external clients and provides frequent commentaries on economic and financial market developments for many Australian and international media organisations, as well as contributing specific opinion pieces on particular issues of interest.

Prior to joining Macquarie, Brian worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia in the Economic Analysis Department for 5 years.

Anthony Limbrick

Mr Anthony Limbrick has eighteen years experience in the financial markets and is a Director and Member of the Investment Committee of 36 South Investment Managers Limited, a specialist volatility and tail risk investment manager with a six year track record of circa +14% annualized returns on their flagship Kohinoor Series Funds. Mr Limbrick is also Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Pure Capital Limited, a “targeted non-correlation” investment manager. In addition to these roles, Mr Limbrick is Chairman of the New Zealand Absolute Return Association, the industry body representing the NZ hedge fund and CTA industry. Mr Limbrick has a Master of Applied Finance degree from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Aaron Minney

Aaron has the responsibility to review investment capabilities and assist innovation across the investment teams within Colonial First State Global Asset Management. Using this understanding of the investment processes, he is able to tailor investment solutions for clients, including the potential to separate active return from market exposure and other structured solutions.

Aaron joined Colonial First State Global Asset Management in October 2006.

Aaron’s previous role was head of Australian Fixed Interest at Macquarie Funds Management managing more than $5bn of fixed income investments. Aaron has over 13 years experience including tactical asset allocation, strategic benchmark setting, and portfolio management.

Rob da Silva

Rob is a portfolio manager specialising in Asia Pacific Corporate Securities and non-sovereign portfolios for Principal Global Investors. His responsibilities include assessment and management of credit-based fixed income investments in Australia and Asia, as well as holding the primary responsibility for security selection and sector allocation with respect to Asia Pacific multi-sector fixed income portfolios. Rob joined the firm in 1988. Previously, he was with Morgan Grenfell Australia Investment Ltd as the director of fixed income. He received a bachelor's degree in finance and economics from NSW Institute of Technology and an MBA in economics from the University of Technology, Sydney. He is an associate of the Securities Industry of Australia.

Dr. Hemant Manuj

Dr. Hemant Manuj currently heads the Risk group at IDFC and has, over the last 10 years, been involved in the development and implementation of innovative and relevant risk management and asset liability management systems. Prior to this, he has worked as the investment strategist for domestic as well as international funds focussed on India. He has also worked with the capital markets regulator in the formative stages of the opening up of the Indian markets. His interests include analysis and valuation of financial products, hedging structures, and understanding the emerging patterns of risk in modern markets.

Peter Pontikis

Peter Pontikis is the Group Treasury Strategist for Suncorp Banking and has over two and a half decades of corporate dealing, trading and research experience in global money markets. Peter also is a fellow of CPA Australia and sits on their national Treasury and Finance committee where he writes a regular monthly column for their journal “In the Black”

He is the current Treasurer of the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA). A Fellow of FINSIA, he also has authored several books on foreign exchange and trading in financial markets as well as producing a mandarin language CD on Chinese Financial Markets.

Tom Beecroft

Tom Beecroft started his private equity career in the US in 1984 with Texas Capital Corporation. In 1992 he became a business owner and manager in the US and Australia, returning to private equity in 2001. He has been a director of over 25 companies in various industries including manufacturing, industrial services, and finance. With Navis, he focuses on investment opportunities in Australia/NZ while providing support to Navis teams working in Asia.
Mr. Beecroft holds a BSc and BBA (Hons) from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Sidney Chong

Sidney joined BT Financial Group in 2007 as Head of Fixed Interest, Currency and Cash for BT Investment Solutions. Sidney is responsible for the asset allocation, manager research, portfolio construction and ongoing monitoring of the fixed interest & alternative asset portfolios.

Sidney also worked for Mercer Investment Consulting as an Investment Consultant, advising for a number of industry, endowment, religious and foundation investors on a variety of investment manager and portfolio construction issues for their multi-manager portfolios. He also contributed to the strategic research of alternative assets.

Previously Sidney was the Head of Quantitative Analysis and Performance Reporting at van Eyk Research, where he was responsible for quantitative research for investment manager selection and portfolio construction analysis.

Sidney also spent 9 years at Citicorp Global Asset Management, where he worked in performance analysis and client reporting across their institutional and retail asset management divisions.

Sidney has a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney. Sidney has also pursued further studies in derivative markets with the Securities Institute of Australia and commercial studies with the Australian Institute of Bankers. Sidney is also a regular speaker at industry conferences.

David Stocken

David Stocken has worked in financial markets for over two decades. His work experiences include broking, principal trading and equity derivatives market making. David has worked in London, New York and Hong Kong. He now works closely with ASX customers to enhance trading efficiency into the ASX Equity Cash and Derivatives Markets.

Dr Elizabeth Sheedy

Prior to joining Macquarie University Elizabeth worked at financial institutions including Westpac and Macquarie Bank. She now teaches in the Master of Applied Finance program and conducts research in market risk modelling. She is on the Academic Advisory Committee for the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA).

Hing S. Tang

Dr. Tang joined BOCI-Prudential in 2006. His Quantitative Team is responsible for developing robust scientific investment platform and managing global portfolios across all asset classes. He also runs the Institutional Sales Team to develop the institutional business with focus on Asian countries.

During the past 11 years, Dr. Tang possessed proven track records in the active/passive management of global portfolios and retirement funds in the region. He managed the Tracker Fund of Hong Kong (TraHK) (2800), the iShares FTSE/Xinhua A50 China Tracker (2823), W.I.S.E. - CSI 300 China TrackerTM (2827) and W.I.S.E. - CSI HK100 TrackerTM (2825).

Jean-Marc Schwob

Jean-Marc Schwob is SunGard’s product manager for the Adaptiv Credit Risk solution based in Sydney. Jean-Marc is responsible for the overall direction of the Adaptiv Credit product including determining industry trends, product direction and development, documenting current and proposed system functionality; plus generating global awareness and interest in the product.

Jean-Marc held various senior credit risk management positions where he gained a wealth of experience in credit analysis and ratings of counterparties; credit policies and procedures; credit exposure measurement methodologies; economic and regulatory credit risk capital adequacy; collateral management; trade data integrity; legal documentation system requirements (for netting and collateralisation); issuer risk; and project management of new business initiatives.

Gerald Naughton

Gerald is Investment Director, AMP Funds responsible for strategic and tactical asset allocation, portfolio oversight and client relationship between AMPCI (Investment Company) and AMP Life and AMP Group, with some $70b under management.
From June 2006, Gerald also heads the Structure Equities Team – a team of 6 responsible for managing various protected equity and equity overlay products, with $6b under management; and the Private Capital Portfolios Team – responsible for developing an appropriate portfolio from AMP Capital’s Infrastructure and Private equity Funds.
Gerald has served on various industry groups – NZ Society of Investment Analysts (former Chair), NZ Institute of Chartered Accountants (Sydney Branch), and in 2003 he was appointed to the Council of the NZ Institute of Chartered Accountants. He was made a Fellow of the Institute in 2005. Gerald has been involved in several Government-Industry Groups looking at the use of derivatives in managing Superannuation Funds and tax changes.

Dr Stephen Nash

Stephen is the Head of Fixed Income and Cash for State Street Global Advisors, Australia, Limited. He joined the firm in August 2000 to manage the fixed income and cash mandates for SSgA in Sydney. At SSgA, Stephen is responsible for the active and passive management of approximately AUD 17 billion in assets, where roughly a third is represented by domestic bonds, a third global bonds, and a third is cash. Stephen is actively involved in the direction, and creation, of fixed income related projects and has directed many fixed income related projects with other Ph.D. qualified researchers.

Prior to joining SSgA, Stephen worked with the United Nations, where he was responsible for managing a large US dollar-based pension fund for locally-based United Nations staff in the Middle East. As part of this role, Stephen selected, directed, and evaluated a range of external investment managers in various locations, with regard to both global bonds and global equities. Prior to joining the UN, Stephen worked at AMP Investments, where he was a Senior Portfolio Manager in fixed income. In addition, Stephen worked at Deutsche Funds Management for five years as a fixed income portfolio manager. Stephen's initial role was at the National Australia Bank in Melbourne, where he worked as a trader and broker in the fixed income group for three years.

Dr. Stephen Nash has wide experience in the financial markets in a variety of senior roles, mainly focussing institutional investments. Dr. Nash is a qualified accountant and holds the following degrees from the University of Queensland: B.Comm., B.Econ. (Hns.), B.A., and a Masters degree in Economics (Hns.) from the University of Sydney. Recently, Dr. Nash completed the academic requirement for a Ph.D. at The University of Cambridge. Dr. Nash has published a book on economic theory in 1998 entitled; Cost Uncertainty and Welfare: Frank Knight’s Theory of Imperfect Competition (Ashgate), and is a fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society. In addition, Dr. Nash has published in several journals, such as The Journal of Economic Methodology, and The review of Social Economy, as well as contributing chapters to books in economic theory.

Dr Andrew Lepone

Dr Andrew Lepone is the Director of the Futures Industry Research Centre and a Senior Lecturer at the Univerisity of Sydney where he lectures at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Dr Lepone completed his PhD at the University of Sydney in 2007. Dr Lepone has published articles in a number of academic journals, and his research focuses on the microstructure of futures and equities markets.

Peter Pontikis

Martin Tolar

Martin Tolar is currently the CEO of the Australasian Compliance Institute. Martin has over 11 years experience working within the Association sector and has previously held various education and business development roles with SIA (Now FINSIA – Financial Services Institute of Australia). He worked for AFMA in a variety of challenging roles including Head of Accreditation and Training, General Manager of Business Development and most recently as General Manager, where he was responsible for overseeing and growing their clients who consisted of seven financial markets associations. Martin has been a University Lecturer in economics, finance and management, and possesses a strong understanding of Government and its practices, due to time spent in Local and Federal Government as a councilor and a Ministerial Adviser.

Melissa Babbage

Melissa Babbage is Head of Global Finance and Foreign Exchange for Australia/NZ. In this role she is responsible for a team focused on risk transfer and product solutions for a variety of institutional and corporate clients in the areas of foreign exchange and short tern interest rates. Since joining Deutsche Bank 11 years ago, Melissa has enjoyed trading, structuring and management roles across Commodity, FX and Short term Interest Rate products both in Australia and Asia.
Prior to joining Deutsche in 1997, Melissa was an interest rate options trader at Bankers Trust from 1992-1997.
Melissa is a graduate UNSW Masters of Commerce and University of Sydney BAppSc.

Philip Combes

Philip Combes is currently Treasurer of the New Zealand Debt Management Office (NZDMO), having taken up the position in June 2002. As Treasurer, he is responsible for the overall operations of NZDMO in managing the New Zealand government's debt, net cash flows and associated financial assets.

Previously, Philip served for four years as Chief Executive of the Tasmanian Public Finance Corporation (TASCORP); one of the Australian state central financing authorities.
Prior to that, he was Director of Budget and Finance for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in South Australia, following several years in senior management roles with the South Australian Government Financing Authority (SAFA).

Andrew Baume

Andrew Baume has been working in the financial markets for over 20 years. He joined Challenger in May 2008 as Director Product Development in the Asset Management business.

Prior to joining Challenger he had been at Deutsche Bank in the Global Markets Division in Sydney for 8 years. Andrew had been involved in analysing and structuring investment and debt products including bonds, derivatives and hybrids. He had represented Deutsche Bank as a Board and Diligence committee member of a variety of wholesale and retail focused investment SPVs.

Earlier he was with Westpac for 13 years trading and structuring a variety of money market, foreign exchange, fixed interest and securitised products.

Graham Johnson

Graham Johnson has been with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) for 10 years. He is currently a General Manager in the Diversified Institutions Division, heading a team supervising a number of major banks, insurance and wealth management companies. Prior to that, Graham headed the Specialist Risk Services group, overseeing dedicated teams covering credit, operational, insurance and balance sheet & market risk. Graham has been actively involved in the Basel II work at APRA since the early 2000s.

Prior to joining APRA, Graham held a wide range of positions at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) for over 20 years.

Joerg Koeppenkastrop

Joerg Koeppenkastrop is a structured equity products and derivatives specialist with 20 years experience in the Australian and overseas markets.
Until he decided to take a career break in July 2008 he was Head of Product at Next Financial Limited, a boutique investment adviser and structured product issuer, where he was responsible for product design, product management, and product marketing for Next Financials product suit.
Prior to Next Financial he was Head of Equity Derivatives at ANZ and Head of Equity Derivatives Trading at Deutsche Bank. He has considerable experience in the development of financial products, starting from product conceptualization through to execution and management.
Before joining Deutsche Bank in Sydney he was working as Co Head of Equity Derivatives at Westfalenbank Duesseldorf, Germany. He holds a Masters of Economics and Business from the Ruhr Universitaet Bochum, Germany

Dr Alun Pope

Dr Alun Pope is Research Manager at Rismark International, a specialist real estate research and funds management business, where he is responsible for statistical modelling. Previous employers include St George Bank, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Department of Defence and the Australian Bureau of Statistics and he has been Head of the Department of Statistics at the University of Newcastle. He has authored many refereed papers and been a keynote speaker at several international conferences. He has been NSW Branch President of the Statistical Society of Australia. Alun has a PhD in Mathematics from London University and is an Accredited Statistician.

Dr Frank Ashe

Dr Frank Ashe has a consulting practice specialising in risk management and investments. Risk management covers the gamut from technical matters in option risk, to strategy, to comparative corporate governance. He maintains a part-time Associate Professorship at the Macquarie University Applied Finance Centre where he is responsible for the Financial Risk Management course, and where he spent 2002 to 2006 as a full-time Associate Professor.
Prior to 2002, Dr Ashe worked in Australia and Canada with consultancies, insurance companies, investment management firms, bond dealers, and financial software houses. His 25+ years of practical experience have been predominantly in the measurement and management of financial risk and return, with an emphasis on asset-liability management, and developing risk measurement and management tools for novel situations. His passion is for the clear expression of risk concepts to the non-specialist at all levels in the organisation
He is a regular presenter at industry seminars and colloquia, and is currently President of the Australian Q-Group. He regularly travels through East Asia, teaching financial risk management in Beijing, Singapore and Tokyo, and is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Dr Ashe obtained his PhD in Operations Research from the University of New South Wales. He majored in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Statistics, and Actuarial Science, with First Class Honours in Mathematics, from Macquarie University.

Dr Ioannis Akkizidis

Dr Ioannis Akkizidis is a senior consultant on risk management working in IRIS integrated risk management ag acquired recently by FRSGlobal. He has work experiences worldwide in business and financial risk and profitability analysis and in designing and implementing advanced solutions in the risk-management field for the banking industry. Apart from his several publications in international journals, he is the author of the best seller book titled " Integrating Market, Credit and Operational Risk: A Complete Guide for Bankers & Risk Professionals" (Risk Books, 2006) and the books titled "Guide to Optimal Operational Risk & Basel II" (Taylor & Francis, 2006), “Financial Risk Management for Islamic Banking and Finance” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), and the coming soon published book titled “Unified Financial Analysis, the missing links of finance” (John Wiley & Sons, Jan 2009).

Martin Paino

Martin is a qualified actuary with 10 years experience working in financial services, and is a Director of KPMG Actuaries’ Australian practice.

Martin has extensive experience in building and reviewing reserving models covering operational risk, market risk and credit risk for banks and insurance companies.

He has practical experience in setting capital reserves and risk mitigation strategies for clients for complex market, credit and other risks over many years. This experience has given Martin a detailed understanding of the weaknesses of enterprise risk management systems and capital reserving models.

Martin was also a member of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia asset liability mismatch reserving task force and provided advice to the International Actuarial Association on the development of a solvency standard for credit risk. He has also written a paper on capital reserving for credit risk for insurers and other Institutions.

Mathew Collett

Mathew Collett, CEO Presidium capital ~ Mathew has over 20 years experience in the financial markets working for banks and institutions including Merrill Lynch, JBWere, HSBC & ICAP. Starting originally as a bond trader for Merrill Lynch in the late 80's, he progressed across to sales and marketing roles and eventually into management. He has been involved in and has a thorough understanding of equities, futures, FX and interest rate debt products.
He was Director of JBWere Futures (now Goldman Sachs JBWere), Managing Director of Icap Futures and founding member of Tulletts Futures Australia. He is a SFE Registered Representative, he is an AFMA Accredited Individual though the Financial Services Accreditation Program and he is PS146 compliant.
As principal and CEO of Presidium capital he specialises in dealing with local & international institutions and has built up a large and varied investor base of banks, super funds, HNW’s, family offices and FoHF’s. Through his various roles and his current business he has a relatively good understanding of the alternative investment environment with in Australia and Asia.

Curt McDonald

Curt McDonald is Head of Risk at Kerry Stokes’ Australian Capital Equity (ACE) group of companies, where he is involved in a wide range of investment management activities. He returned to Perth to join ACE after a five-year stint on Wall Street, where he worked for Citicorp, Bear Stearns and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Curt has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Damian Lillicrap

Damian is Head of QIC's Portfolio Design team. Responsibilities include portfolio design for QIC's core clients, a process that involves dynamic asset allocation. Key inputs to this process are asset return forecasts and portfolio modelling.

Damian started at QIC in May 2002 as part of the Global Fixed Interest desk, and moved to Strategy in December 2004.

Damian commenced his career as a Chemical Engineer and worked in industry for 5 years. During this time he completed a Graduate Diploma of Accounting, and is now a Certified Practicing Accountant (CPA).

Previous financial experience includes roles with Macquarie Bank, CBA Institutional Banking, and Credit Suisse Financial Products.