Ben Keeler
Director , Citisoft, Inc.

Ben Keeler is a Director with Citisoft with a focus on Practice Development. In his role as Director, Mr. Keeler provides professional services to the firm's clients in the form of program and project management, strategic and operational analysis, and client initiative facilitation. In addition to his direct work in the firm's day to day consulting practice, Mr. Keeler oversees the firm's knowledge management practices by developing and managing the firm's intellectual assets and driving the firm's thought leadership in the asset management industry.

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Brian Mitchell
Global Head of Dealing & Portfolio Control , Barings

Born in 1968 and educated in Scotland, he spent an initial spells at Fleming Investment Management, Morgan Grenfell Asset Management and Fuji Bank where he worked on various Fixed Income Treasury and Corporate money-market desks. Re-joined Flemings in 1994, studied part-time at London Business School, progressed to become responsible for the firm’s London FX / Fixed Income Dealing team and ran a range of short duration Money Market funds.

Joined Barings in January 1999 as a Director, responsible for the Global Fixed Income and Treasury Trading team, his role expanded in 2002 to include Global Equity, Derivative Trading and the middle-office Order Generation processes. He has ongoing responsibility for the team’s contribution to the Investment / Implementation processes, TCA, Trading activities, Broker relationships and evaluation, MiFID along with related FSA regulatory / procedural issues.

Currently sponsor for Baring’s phased functionality upgrade of legacy Order Generation along with the FIX v4.2 enabled, multi-asset class OMS and LSE FIX Hub. Extending usage of various trading venues and MTF’s across all products, he’s in the past been a member of FXAll’s Client Advisory Board, various FIX JWG’s and is currently Co-Chair of a MiFID Best Execution JWG and on NYFIX Euro-Millennium Advisory Board amongst others.

Chris Skinner
CEO , Balatro

Chris’s background covers over 20 years in banking and technology leading to his creation of Balatro.  Balatro is a networking organisation, a Club and an advisory service, which is dedicated to tracking the key business and technology trends in financial services.  The focus of Balatro includes advising financial institutions on the future of customer, channel and technology usage and segmentation; and advising and supporting technology vendors in their sales and marketing strategies to financial institutions.

One of Chris’s specific skills is translating the learning’s from the Balatro network of over 1,000 professionals into a shared vision.  Chris then shares this vision as an exceptional speaker on the future strategies for banks at the world’s leading financial conferences including the BAI USA, EFMA Europe and the Financial Times UK.  He also writes regular columns on the future of banking for the Banker and Finextra, as well as contributing to other media including the BBC and Financial Times.  

In addition to Chris’s responsibilities at Balatro he is:

• an Associate Director of TowerGroup Research;
• a Contributing Editor to the Banker;
• a member of the Executive team for the standards organisation, TWIST;
• a non-executive director of Original Solutions in Eire; and
• one of the four founders of Shaping Tomorrow, the internet portal for strategists and futurists.

Hirander Misra
Chief Operating Officer and a Director , Chi-X Europe Limited

Hirander Misra is Chief Operating Officer and a Director on the board of Chi-X Europe Limited, a pan-European ATS.  Previously to this, he was Head of the Instinet European Exchange Linkages Group, which successfully delivered Instinet Europe's direct exchange connectivity product suite and the first production ready European Smart Order Routing system.

Hirander started his career as a graduate at Reuters. He is also a member of the Project Management Institute, being a certified Project Management Professional and was educated at the London School of Economics and City University, London.

Johan Erikson
Head of Trading , DnBNOR Asset Management

Runs a global trading team for equities and related instruments located in 3 time zones. Has been 17 years in the market, the last 7 years on buy-side and the previous 10 years on sell-side working for various brokers and banks.

Initiated the first Scandinavian Fix Conference together with FIX Protocol in January 2005 in Stockholm. Winner at Trade Tech awards 2007 - "Best Buy Side Use of Advanced Trading Tools".

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John Lee
co-founder, CEO and publisher , The TRADE Ltd

John Lee is co-founder, CEO and publisher, The TRADE Ltd and executive director of writing and research consultancy Information Partners (IP). He is responsible for the editorial direction of The TRADE magazine, which focuses on global equities trading, The TRADE Asia and daily news site www.thetradenews.com.   

John regularly speaks and chairs industry conferences/roundtables. He was co-author of the book ‘Global custody: a guide for the nineties.’ He has written for The FT, The Sunday Times and The Independent, amongst others, and written and produced documentaries on the financial industry’s response to 9/11 and China’s entry into the WTO.

Mary Storrs
Director , Cutter Associates

Mary Storrs is a member of the Research division of Cutter Associates. She has 25 years experience in the investment management industry, most recently focusing on trading technologies including order management, compliance, execution management, and derivatives processing. Mary’s Cutter consulting experience has included order management system searches and implementations for several large asset management firms. She also brings to bear several years working as a portfolio manager in a large Boston bank.

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Niels Børsting
Head of Trading , ATP

Niels is head of the trading desk, which he started in 2000, with the main focus on equity and equity related products in the developed markets. He now also oversees the FX trading within ATP. Niels has been much involved in the development of the structure of ATP's investment management and the recent chance into a split of the portfolio to an alpha and beta portfolio.

Prior to ATP Niels has been a market maker and proprietary trader in scandinavian equities and derivatives at Unibank(Nordea) and BG Bank(Danske Bank) and a sales trader at the same companies.

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PJ Di Giammarino
founder and CEO , JWG-IT Group Limited

Former COO IT at Barclays Capital, PJ is the founder and CEO of JWG-IT Group Limited, a Think Tank which helps implementers of European regulatory driven IT change increase the likelihood and speed of successful implementation by recommending 80% common, market sensitive and affordable operating models.

Prior to commercialising this entity, he co-chaired the IT Subject Group of the MiFID Joint Working Group. In this capacity he collaborated with sell-side and buy-side firms, the European Commission, CESR, FSA, HM Treasury and their counterparts across Europe as well as the IT and market data supplier communities. PJ works with top tier financial services firms to define and implement IT strategies which increase performance and reduce operational risk. He has a proven track record in running IT services while successfully executing large-scale change.

PJ spent 14 years in management consultancy with EDS/A.T. Kearney, Booz Allen & Hamilton, and McKinsey serving global companies outside the financial services industry.

He is a frequent author and public speaker on topics including EU regulation, low latency and financial services infrastructure. He serves as a Wholesale Banking Technology Innovation Award judge for the Financial Times’ The Banker magazine and the Financial News Awards for IT excellence.

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Robert Hegarty
Managing Director and Practices Leader, Securities , TowerGroup

Rob Hegarty is Managing Director for two of TowerGroup’s practice areas: Securities & Investments, which is the umbrella for Securities & Capital Markets, Investment Management, and Brokerage & Wealth Management; and Insurance, covering the life and annuity industry as well as the property and casualty industry.

Before joining TowerGroup in 1999, Rob was vice president of trading systems at Putnam Investments in Boston. Prior to Putnam, he was with Fidelity Investments in Boston for eight years, most recently as vice president of technology of the institutional broker-dealer arm of Fidelity Investments (Fidelity Capital Markets), where he had overall responsibility for technology for this $300 million company. Previously, he was division vice president at Drexel Burnham Lambert in New York and was with the IT management consulting division of Coopers & Lybrand’s Boston office.

Quoted frequently by publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Institutional Investor, and Wall Street & Technology, Rob has been a featured speaker at dozens of industry conferences and has appeared on ABC-TV and syndicated radio.

Rob holds an M.B.A. with a finance/marketing concentration from Babson College and a B.S. in computer science from North Adams State College. He is also NASD Series 7 and 63 registered.

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Sang Lee
Co-founder and managing partner , Aite Group, LLC

Sang Lee is a co-founder of Aite Group, LLC and currently serves as the managing partner. Mr. Lee's expertise lies in the securities and investments vertical and has advised many global financial institutions, software/hardware vendors, and professional services firms in sell-side and buy-side electronic trading technology and market structure.

Mr. Lee has been quoted extensively in the media, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Business Week, Newsday, CBS MarketWatch, and Investor's Business Daily.  He has also been quoted in, and written articles for, various trade publications, including Pensions and Investments, Institutional Investor, Crain’s New York Business, Wall Street & Technology, Euromoney, Trading Technology Week, Securities Industry News, Financial News, HedgeWorld, American Banker, Bank Technology News, and The Bond Buyer.

Prior to joining Aite Group, Mr. Lee was a founding member of Celent Communications and served as the Manager of the Securities & Investments Group as well as the Operations Group. At Celent, Mr. Lee played a pivotal role in creating and growing one of the leading Securities & Investments practices in the financial services research industry.

Prior to Celent, Mr. Lee served as a business strategist for ZEFER, an industry-leading Internet professional services firm in Boston. At ZEFER, Mr. Lee formulated Internet business strategies for Fortune 1000 clients.

Previously, Mr. Lee was an analyst at Meridien Research, where he analyzed the online strategies of some of the world’s leading brokerage firms.

Mr. Lee also worked for D. E. Shaw Financial Technology, where he was responsible for business development and marketing. At D.E. Shaw, Mr. Lee conducted market research and competitive analysis, as well as spearheading partnership programs. He played an instrumental role in the sale of D.E. Shaw Financial Technology to Merrill Lynch.

Mr. Lee received his BA from the University of Michigan and his MA from Columbia University. Mr. Lee is fluent in English and Korean.

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Scott Cowling
Principal , Equity Trading

Scott Cowling is head of Equity Trading. He has responsibility for BGI Europe's trading infrastructure and for the design and implementation of trading strategies for all BGI's index and active equity, equity derivative and commodity products. Prior to joining BGI in 1999, Scott worked on the trading desk at PRICOA Investment Management for two years specialising in European equities. In 1995, Scott graduated from St Andrews University with a Masters in Physics and is also a CFA charterholder.

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Sean Park
Founding Partner , sixth paradigm llp

Sean Park is a leading independent thinker on the future of financial markets, the author of The Park Paradigm, and the founding partner of Sixth Paradigm LLP,a new advisory and investment firm focusing on the intersection of financial services and technology, organized around the central theme of a new industry paradigm driven by accelerating technological change and the impact of changing social and cultural trends. These include demographic change, globalization and deregulation. 

Sean is also a founding investor in innovative companies such as Betfair,WeatherBill (where he is also a non-executive Director) and seed camp and has extensive experience investing in and advising start-up and high growth companies in addition to over 16 years of experience working at a senior level in capital markets and investment banking. Building businesses has been a key theme throughout his career. 

Prior to founding Sixth Paradigm LLP in 2007, he worked at Dresdner Kleinworts London office as Managing Director and Head of Digital Markets; a business division created in 2005 to develop, deploy and operate a complete suite of electronic/web-based trading, execution and analytical services across the full spectrum of capital markets and investment banking products. He was also a member of the Capital Markets Management Committee. 

Sean joined Dresdner Kleinwort in 2000, where he held a series of senior positions in the Credit business including Head of Credit Flow Products. Prior to this, he held several positions such as Head of the European Bond Syndicate at BNP Paribas, having previously traded Ecu eurobonds and French government bonds, and was directly involved in most of the inaugural benchmark bond issues that laid the foundations of the Euro Capital Markets.

He is also a former board Director (and past Chairman) of International Index Company (provider of the iBoxx bond, iTraxx credit derivative and the iBoxxFX currency indices) and a founding Director of Markit Group (the leading industry source for asset valuation data and services supporting independent price verification and risk management in global financial and energy markets.) 

Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Sean has a BSc in Materials Science from Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is now based in London.

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Simon Garland
CTO , KxSystems

Simon Garland is responsible for technical support of Kx products worldwide. Prior to joining Kx in 2002, he worked for an international database search engine firm, as well as for Credit Suisse's risk management department. He has developed software using the k programming language and kdb since the products were introduced and has specialized in financial and business database programming, including global risk limit and search engine applications, since the 1980s. Mr. Garland received his degree in Mathematics from the University of London and is currently based in Europe.

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Tom Groenfeldt
Freelance Writer , techandfinance.com

Tom Groenfeldt is a freelance writer focused on financial technology. He has a blog  techandfinance.com and has written for many financial industry publications such as Alpha, Institutional Investor, Banking Technology, Securities Industry News, and Risk

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William F. Gibson
Chairman & CEO , IVY Creek Associates

William F. Gibson is the founder of IVY Creek Associates, a consulting firm to the financial services industry.  He has been the Global Chief Operating Officer for ING Investment Management, the $400 billion asset management subsidiary of ING, and the Chief Operating Officer for New York Life Investment Management.  In these, and previous roles, he provides leadership in the information technology, securities processing and operations, mergers & acquisitions, finance, risk management, compliance, and strategic planning areas. 

Will has spent thirty years in the financial services industry, both on Wall Street and internationally. He has worked with Merrill Lynch, The Sequor Group (of Security Pacific), Barclays Capital, Manufacturers Hanover, American Express, and Realty Capital Group.  

Will is on the Board of Directors of the Asset Management Division of the Bond Market Association; he is the Chairman of the Technology Subcommittee, and a member of the Executive Committee.  He has participated in numerous panels and committees of the National Investment Company Service Association (NICSA), Association Luxembourgeoise des Fonds d'Investissement (ALFI), the Securities Industry Association, and chaired the international Euromoney Outsourcing conference.