Speakers


Speakers

Jessica Amir
Market Strategist
Saxo Markets

Jessica Amir joined Saxo with over 14 years’ experience in financial markets. She focuses on providing strategies, investment inspiration and ideas; sharing insights in a relatable way, often free of financial jargon. She guides investors and traders through the macroeconomic factors, the key themes to watch, and uses fundamental and technical analysis. She regularly speaks at industry events, as well as on TV, radio and online; being featured across platforms and channels such as ABC News, SBS World News, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, the Telegraph, Yahoo Finance, Reuters and Morningstar. Her prior roles include; lead senior market analyst and presenter with Bell Direct (BFG), head of news and content at Sequoia Financial Group (SEQ) and financial adviser with AMP and CBA. She also worked as a TV financial Journalist, where she interviewed Australian Prime Ministers and Federal Treasurers.

James Andronis
Senior Manager
ASIC

James has led or been involved in a range of strategic projects since joining ASIC’s Market Supervision team. This includes improving conduct in the wholesale markets through market guidance in allocations in equity and debt capital markets transactions and sell-side research. James has extensive industry experience from senior roles in equity capital markets origination and mergers & acquisitions advisory. James holds degrees in law and economics, holds a legal practising certificate and has previously practised as a takeovers lawyer.

James also regularly interacts with overseas regulators through work on International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) Committee 3 Regulation of Market Intermediaries.

David Barrett-Lennard
Head of Execution Services Australia
Liquidnet

David started at Liquidnet in 2019 to build out an Australian Execution Services desk. He is responsible for the low/high touch trading, client coverage and involvement in product development for the execution platform. Prior to Liquidnet, David held a sales and trading role at ITG.

David holds a Bachelor of Science from Sydney University, a Masters in International Business from the University of Wollongong and a Masters of Applied Finance from Macquarie University

Michael Board
Chief Compliance Officer
DCA

Nathan Bourne
Senior Executive Leader, Market Infrastructure
Australian Securities and Investments Commission

Nathan leads ASIC’s Market Infrastructure team. The team supervises Australian market licensees and operators, clearing and settlement facilities, Australian derivative trade repository operators, benchmark administrators and credit rating agencies. Nathan has more than 20 years’ experience in financial markets, regulation and public policy.

Eugene Budovsky
Head of Low Touch Equities Execution, Australia
Credit Suisse

Eugene Budovsky is Head of Low Touch Equities Execution and D1 Sales, Australia for Credit Suisse, and has responsibilities that cover sales, trading, connectivity, regulatory compliance, and product development. Prior to joining Credit Suisse in 2018, Eugene was Head of Deutsche Bank’s Autobahn Equities electronic execution platform for Australia and New Zealand.

Eugene has over 15 years front office experience in Asian equities with roles covering electronic execution, portfolio trading, facilitation, D1 sales and ETF market making.

Andrew Campion
General Manager, Investment Products & Strategy
ASX

Andrew has worked for over two decades in financial services and related industries, with experience in multiple asset classes and geographies. He has spent a significant portion of his career in the UK and the US, where his roles varied from derivatives product controller, strategy consultant, as well as equity derivatives trader. Currently, he is General Manager of the Investment Products & Strategy team at ASX, which covers ETFs, LICs, mFunds, REITs, warrants, hybrids, and bonds, as well as the overall strategy of the Listings business. Prior to joining ASX, Andrew was Executive Director in Equity Derivatives Trading for Goldman Sachs in Sydney.

Andrew holds a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) from Macquarie University, a MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and is a CFA charterholder.

Daniel Clarke
Head of Asia Pacific
ITRS Group

Daniel Clarke is the Head of Asia Pacific at ITRS Group, based in Hong Kong. Dan is focusing on ITRS Asia growing financial services solution across the region including ITRS real-time monitoring and observability offerings. Responsible for the regional initiatives around clients moving towards ‘event driven’ architectures based around the growing move towards reactive intelligence on in-motion data. Having worked in the capital markets technology space for the last 12 years, 5 with Informatica’s low latency messaging technologies, Daniel has a strong understanding of the landscape for high performance and enterprise architectures.

Carole Comerton-Forde
Professor of Finance
University of Melbourne

Carole has been researching the global exchange industry for over 20 years. Her research in market structure examines how the mechanics of the market, such as regulation and technology, impact prices, liquidity and trader behaviour. Her research focuses on equities markets but spans many geographies including the US, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong and Australia. Her current research interests include high frequency trading, dark pools, fragmentation and the connection between the cost of raising capital and secondary market liquidity. Her research has been published in the top academic finance journals including the Journal of Finance and Journal of Financial Economics.

Carole previously held academic positions at UNSW Business School, Australian National University and University of Sydney, and visiting positions at New York University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was also Visiting Economist at the New York Stock Exchange. In addition to her academic role, she is an economic consultant for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and an Academic Advisor to the Plato Partnership in Europe. She also consults with market participants, stock exchanges, market regulators around the world.

Dion Cooney
Senior Trader – Equities
AllianceBernstein

Dion Cooney is a Vice President and Senior Trader on the Equities team. Before joining AB in 2020, he was a managing director at Virtu Financial, heading the Asia Pac Execution Services team in Hong Kong. Prior to that, Cooney was based in Sydney and New York in various roles for Investment Technology Group over a 19-year period. Location: Sydney

Melissa Cooper
Director, Head of Sales, Electronic Trading
Credit Suisse

Mel Cooper is a Director, Head of Sales, Electronic Trading at Credit Suisse, based in Sydney.

Mel began her career with Citi spending more than 14 years in a variety of trading roles based in Sydney, Hong Kong and London. She then worked in Business Development for the ASX Trading Services division for five years, ahead of joining Credit Suisse in 2018.

Passionate about the next generation, Mel invests time in mentoring and networking with young professionals. Her particular focus is on attracting more women to the financial markets industry. She is also Chair of the Credit Suisse Australia Women’s Network.

In 2021 Mel won the Women in Finance Asia Award for Excellence in Sell-Side Trading.

Mel holds a Bachelor of Economics degree and Post Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment. She is married with three children, achieving balance in life by running, having completed New York and Sydney Marathons.

Jamie Coutts
Crypto Market Analyst
Bloomberg Intelligence

Jamie is the crypto market analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence creating research insights for institutions assessing public blockchain assets as a part of their strategic investment allocations.

With over 20 years of experience in the financial markets, Jamie started his career in Australia as a stockbroker for Credit Suisse before roles as a hedge fund trader with Tudor Capital Management and equity sales positions in both London and Singapore. He joined Bloomberg in 2014 as the senior equity market specialist driving sales and product initiatives for buy-side clients across APAC. Around 2016 Jamie became immersed in the crypto/digital assets space, helping shape the product offering and sales strategy for Bloomberg before transitioning into a research analyst role. Jamie holds two technical analysis designations and serves on the global board of the Chartered Markets Technician (CMT) Association where he is also head of APAC Development.

Stephen Ead
Head of iShares Product and Platform in Australia
BlackRock

Stephen is the head of product and platform for iShares ETFs in Australia. He is responsible for iShares product management/development and oversight of the day-to-day operations in both the primary and secondary ETF market. Stephen joined the firm in 2002 working in the European Business Development team in London. He moved to Australia in 2007 as a business analyst working on iShares and other operational processes, before moving to iShares in 2012. Prior to joining the firm Stephen worked for Baring Asset Management in London. Stephen has over 20 years industry experience and holds a BA in Economics from the University of Leeds.

Ross Etwell
Market and Product Specialist
Bloomberg

Ross Etwell is a Market and Product Specialist at Bloomberg in Sydney.

He is experienced in all aspects of buyside workflows across multiple asset classes, from idea generation, execution and post trade.

Ross has spent 7 years in Asia with Bloomberg working across buyside workflow (Bloomberg AIM) and sellside (Bloomberg TOMS).

Ross holds a degree in Economics and History from the University of Otago, New Zealand and a Post Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance from the Securities Institute of Australia.

James Giarratano
Senior Director and Head of Institutional Sales
Cboe Australia

James Giarratano is a Senior Director and Head of Institutional Sales at Cboe Australia, part of Cboe Global Markets.

With over 19 years of financial services experience on both Buy and primarily Sell Side, James has worked in New York, Sydney and Hong Kong, more recently leading electronic equities trading desks for APAC client coverage, product innovation and growth. Over his career, James has been in senior management roles and successfully led through two large, corporate merger/acquisitions (Knight to Getco in 2012, Deutsche Bank Global Equities prime finance and execution division to BNP Paribas 2019).

James graduated from Umass, Amherst with a BA in Economics and has held professional licenses with FINRA and the SFC.

Jemma Hakobyan
Senior VP, Head of Markets and Securities Services Technology Australia
Citi

In Australia Jemma began her career as an Analyst Developer at ASX, before working at a few Global Investment Banks in electronic trading application delivery space responsible for some industry critical projects (ASX SEATS transition to ITS at ABN Amro, Chi-X Aust Implementation at UBS, build and implementation of the regional OMS for ALGO trading/ Index Arbitrage /single stock trading at JP Morgan). Jemma was the Delivery Manager and industry SME for ASIC’s MAI Market Surveillance platform implementation (in 2013). During her two years of tenure at KPMG, Jemma consulted a number of financial institutions across their technology risk management and governance processes, as well as to ASX for the full review of their Market Making rules across many asset classes. She has also worked at IRESS and lead the client platform implementation stream of work, delivering integrated solutions to CFS, CommSec, NAB Trade, AUSEIX and FP Markets. Jemma holds Master of Science in Applied Mathematics from Yerevan State University.

Mark Hiriart
Global Head of SaaS Distribution
OSL

Joined OSL as head of business development and sales for OSL in Australia in March 2020 but is now looking after distribution efforts for OSL SaaS globally. 15 years of experience in trading, sales and structuring equity derivatives. Pre Covid was the head of flow derivative sales at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong before moving to Sydney in late 2020 to build the structured solutions business. Previous to that he traded equity derivatives for JPMorgan in Sydney and worked on the structuring and sales desks at JPMorgan in Hong Kong and London.

Ben Jackson
General Manager, Market Operations
ASX

Ben is an experienced financial markets professional, with 30 years working in Operations at five different international exchanges - in highly regulated environments.

Ben started his career at the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) a futures market in London, then moved to the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) as a Trading Pit Observer, and as well as London Commodities Exchange (LCE) trading floor.

Ben has been at the Australian Securities Exchange – ASX, for 19 years, and is currently the General Manager, Market Operations, accountable for the operation of the ASX equity and derivatives trading systems, as well as the surveillance and the Market Announcement Platforms.

Jason Lapping
Head of International Equity Trading
Dimensional Fund Advisors

Jason Lapping heads Dimensional’s International trading team, with twelve traders located in London, Singapore and Sydney. His focus is on ensuring the firm's execution strategies and technological infrastructure meet the highest standards.

Originally from South Africa, Jason studied economics at the University of Cape Town before moving to London to start his career in the financial sector. Jason joined Dimensional in 2010 and brings deep knowledge and experience of global markets, including the unique microstructure of those in the Asia Pacific region. This experience was garnered over fourteen years working around the world with Societe Generale in their equities derivatives division, and heading desks in London, Paris, Hong Kong and Australia.

Jason reports to Ryan Wiley, Head of Global Equity Trading.

Frances Liu
APAC FIGI and LEI Strategist
Bloomberg

Frances Liu is a senior data professional with over 15 years of experience in the financial industry with extensive knowledge of market identifiers, reference data and ESG data. She is currently looking after the APAC Open Symbology data and is responsible for the strategy, product development and industry engagement for the financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI) standard and Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) registration service in the APAC Region.

Prior to joining the Open Symbology team, she was an APAC Senior ESG specialist and she established the Hong Kong Sustainability Reporting Working Group in 2012.

Camilla R. Love
Director, Perennial Investment Management Limited, and
Founder, F3 – Future Females in Finance

GAICD, F.FIN.
MBA (Exec), B.A, B.Com, Dip Fin Advising, M. Applied Finance, Dip. Company Directors.

Camilla is a Director at Perennial Investment Management Limited and was the Managing Director of their active ETF boutique, eInvest, between 2017 and 2022. Camilla is also a Director at Perennial Private Ventures GP LP Pty Ltd, governing Perennial’s venture capital limited partnership.

Over the twenty years she has been with the Perennial Group, she has been an integral member of the team marketing, promoting, building and governing the Perennial business.

In 2017, Camilla also founded F3 – Future Females in Finance. F3 aims to foster the next generation of female talent in financial services through education, providing great career role models, demystifying careers and providing practical work experience.

Camilla is a Fellow of FINSIA and is a Director on the Abbotsleigh Foundation and Metis Technologies, and is the Chair of the UNSW Alumni Advisory Committee.

Camilla has jumped out of a plane twice, likes to ski off high mountains and loves a good laugh (one ‘Who’s line is it anyway’ episode at a time).

Twitter:
@camillarlove
@fthreeau

LinkedIn:
Camilla Love: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camilla-love-58614a1b/
F3: https://www.linkedin.com/company/18086759/
Perennial: https://www.linkedin.com/company/perennial-value-management/

Cliff Man
Head of Portfolio Management
Global X

Cliff is responsible for portfolio management and investment operations across all Global X products. He joined Global X in 2013 and has previous experience with Guotai Junan International and Hang Seng Bank. Cliff is a CFA charterholder and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Computing (Hons) and is currently studying a Juris Doctor degree.

Edward Mangles
Regional Director, Asia Pacific
FIX Trading Community

Edward Mangles has helped support The FIX Trading Community’s Asia Pacific committee for the past over 20 years, playing a key role in promoting institutional trading standards and FIX adoption across the region, and facilitating cross-industry collaboration. In March 2009, Edward was appointed Asia Pacific Regional Director for the FIX Trading Community, and works closely with the buyside, sellside, regulator, exchange and technology provider members of the institutional trading community to support efficient trading.

Matt Moore
Executive Director, Head of Australian Sales
Instinet Australia Pty Ltd.

Matt Moore is responsible for Instinet’s Australian trading business having joined in 2009. With 20 years of industry experience across roles in Transition Management and Portfolio / Electronic trading, Matt has focused his career on understanding best execution to reduce transaction costs. Prior to Instinet Matt held roles with Macquarie, Merrill Lynch and State Street Global Markets. Matt holds a Bachelor of Business and is a CFA charter holder.

Murrough O’Brien
Co-Chair, Australia Working Group, FIX Trading Community, and
APAC Head of Sales, Cboe BIDS Australia

Murrough is Head of Sales for BIDS in Asia. He is responsible for spearheading the expansion and growth of BIDS Trading across the region.

In his previous role at Cboe Australia, Murrough was Head of Institutional Sales, responsible for growing the institutional footprint of the firm’s Australian operation as well as managing existing Institutional and market making participants. Cboe Australia is a cutting-edge securities and derivatives exchange, which has transformed the Australian investment market through a focus on customers, innovation and value.

Murrough has worked in the industry for over 20 years in New York, London and Sydney and has a broad depth of experience in electronic trading, block trading, market micro-structure, algorithmic trading and technological innovation within equities markets. Prior to Cboe Australia, he ran Liquidnet Australia and before that Head of Electronic Execution for Australia and NZ at Citigroup where he helped steer the franchise through the market integrity rule changes that allowed multiple markets in Australia.

Yemi Oluwi
Co-Chair, Australia Working Group, FIX Trading Community, and
Head of Market Operations and Technology, National Stock Exchange of Australia

Yemi has over 20 years' experience in financial markets, specialising in electronic trading. At NSX he is responsible for the operation of the market and the technology strategy of the NSX, and its implementation to deliver business objectives. Roles prior include providing solution analysis and FIX expertise for ASX and implementing electronic trading solutions for Deutsche Bank and UBS.

Morgan Potter
Chief Executive Officer
Nine Mile

Morgan co-founded Nine Mile after 16 years as managing director with Macquarie Group (Sydney, Hong Kong & New York) and Goldman Sachs (Australia). Prior to Nine Mile, Morgan was based in New York and Hong Kong with Macquarie as Global Head of ETF Trading. Morgan holds a Bachelor Engineering (Structural).

Todd Prado
Global Head of Dealing
First Sentier Investors

Todd joined First Sentier Investors in July 2011 in Singapore as the Global Head of Equity Dealing and is now also has responsibility for managing all trading activities across equities, fixed income, foreign exchange and derivatives for the firm. While in Singapore he also served as a member of the SGX Securities Advisory Committee. In January 2016, he relocated to our Sydney office in the same role.

Prior to joining First Sentier Investors, he worked at Janus Capital for 11 years (2000 – 2011) as the Regional Head of Trading and was responsible for supervising and executing all Asian regional equity trading. Todd worked closely with Portfolio Managers to advise on trading strategies and the role encompassed establishing and maintaining Janus’ relationships with brokers, exchanges and regulators across the region. At Janus Capital, he was on the Board of Janus Capital Singapore.

Prior to Janus, Todd was employed at Fidelity Investments from 1997 – 2000 in Tokyo where he was responsible for trading Japanese and Korean equities. He started his career with Cantor Fitzgerald in Tokyo in 1994 as a currency options broker.

More recently, he helped to found the Forum for Australian Institutional Traders in 2021 to represent the “Buyside” in market structure matters in Australia, serves as an advisor to FIX Australia, Hong Kong Exchange/Stock Connect – Buyside Working Group, Quorum 15 and was Co-Chair of the Asia Trader Forum from 2016-2018 and is still an active member of that group.

Todd holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Arizona State University (US).

Will Psomadelis
Global Head of Trading Research and Australian Head of Trading
Schroders Investment Management

Will is the Global Head of Trading Research and also the Australian Head of Trading for Schroders. He is responsible for the creation of, and ongoing research into, Alpha Decay Analysis for order timing, Algorithm analytics including automated recommendations for Strategy Selection and the design and construction of short-term alpha models.

Aman Pujara
Head of Quantitative Research and Algorithmic Development, APAC
Virtu

Aman is Virtu's Head of Quantitative Research and Algorithmic Development, APAC. Based in Singapore, he has led the creation of Virtu's new algorithmic trading suite, Frontier, used by institutions and hedge funds globally trading equities across APAC markets.

Prior to joining Virtu in 2019, Aman was an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs in London focused on algorithmic trading strategies across EMEA markets. Aman holds a Masters, with honours, in Mathematics from Imperial College London.

Emma Quinn
Global Co-Head - Equity Trading
AllianceBernstein

Emma Quinn (she/her) was appointed Global Co-Head of Equity Trading in 2014. Previously, she served as head of Asia-Pacific Trading, head of Asia-Pacific Fixed Income and Australia Equities Trading, and head of Trading for Australia and New Zealand. Quinn joined the firm in 2001 as a senior trader. Prior to that, she worked as an equity trader at AMP Henderson Global Investors. Quinn holds a BBus in finance and business law from the University of Technology, Sydney. She is currently a Director of AllianceBernstein Australia Limited, AllianceBernstein Investment Management Australia Limited and chair of the board of FIX Protocol Limited; a member of the Consultative Advisory Panel for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission; a member of Asia TraderForum; and a member of various Asia Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association committees. Quinn performed a key role in establishing AllianceBernstein’s founding membership of Sustainable Trading. Quinn was also co-chair of the Asia Pacific Regional Committee of the FIX Trading Community from 2012 to 2016. Location: Sydney

Samar Sen
Head of APAC
Talos

Samar heads up the Talos business in APAC, delivering institutional-grade digital asset trading systems to customers on the buy-side and sell-side. Over his 20-year career, Sen has worked in a variety of product, strategy, and technology leadership roles at capital markets firms across the industry. Prior to joining Talos, he served as the Global Head of Digital Products for Securities Services at Deutsche Bank, where he co-led the bank’s digital asset strategy and product delivery. In addition, he has held senior Asia-based roles at BNP Paribas, Barclays, and TradeHero after starting his career at Goldman Sachs in New York. Sen holds a degree in Computer Science from Northwestern University and an MBA from INSEAD.

Minh Tieu
Head of Investment Strategy Group & ETF Capital Markets, Asia Pacific
Vanguard

In this role, Minh is responsible for the investment strategy research agenda, portfolio construction, asset allocation, economic insights in addition to the primary and secondary markets of the ETF product suite in the Asia-Pacific region.

John Toro
Head of Trading
Independent Reserve

John started at Independent Reserve as the Head of Trading in 2020. With 15 years of traditional finance experience, John's role has focused on developing a scalable cryptocurrency trading solution for high net worth, corporate and institutional customers. Prior to joining Independent Reserve, John managed his own proprietary trading fund; and worked in the Chief Investment Office for one of Australia's largest banks.

John holds a Bachelor of Economics (International trade and Finance) and a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance, Accounting) from the University of Queensland.

Neeraj Varma
Director - Sales, Data Center and Communications Group
AMD

Neeraj oversees the AECG’s Datacenter business for APJ & India. In this role, Neeraj leads a team of Regional Sales Managers, apps engineers and a network of Value Added Distributors/Resellers and ISVs across different countries in the region. The customer engagements span across Networking, Compute and Storage segments with focus on AI, SmartNICs, Video, Fintech, High Performance Computing, and Cloud businesses

Neeraj is a technology sales executive with background of engaging with large global accounts and managing high performing sales teams and channels as part of his 16 years of varied roles at Xilinx. Prior to AMD-Xilinx he has had selling and technical roles in the Semiconductor, FPGA/ASIC and EDA tools businesses. The customers engaged were in Telecom, Aerospace & Defence, Audio/Video Broadcast, Automotive and Industrial segments.

Neeraj is a graduate in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering and has an MBA in Marketing.

Peter Warton
Director – Technical Account Management
Cboe Australia

Peter, widely referred to as Wiley, has 33 years’ experience in financial markets technology and operations. Originally a software developer on the ASX SEATS matching engine from the late 80’s to the late 90’s, he was then a software developer on the LME’s matching and clearing system. He has worked for two ISVs; GL Trade then Actant in Europe then North America in the early 2000’s during the collective migration of many U.S. Options exchanges to electronic trading. Wiley has worked at proprietary trading firms IMC and Tibra managing exchange connectivity projects throughout the Asia Pacific region.

Wiley has now been with Cboe Australia (previously Chi-X) for a total of 9 years, heading the Market Operations team and more recently starting up the Technical Account body to provide a more proactive technical interface with clients.

Clare Witts
Co-Chair, Asia Pacific Steering Committee, FIX Trading Community, and
Head of APAC Market Structure, Credit Suisse

Clare Witts is currently APAC Co-Chair of the FIX Trading Community, having actively supported the organization for many years across different working groups and sub-committees. She is Head of APAC Market Structure at Credit Suisse, working with clients and across the bank’s equity trading desks. Her role includes assessing the impact of regulatory and policy trends and analysing how that affects the microstructure of the equity markets and improving trading outcomes. Clare has worked in Asia for over 15 years in a variety of roles that help combine big picture trends with actionable trading insights. As well as over 10 years at a leading trading and technology firm, she has worked in cross-industry functions as the Asia Chair for Quorum 15, the think tank for buy and sellside heads of trading; and as Director of Government and Regulator Relations at CFA Institute representing key topics for the investment management industry to regional policymakers.