Nick Leeson
Industry Commentator

In the early 1980s, Nick Leeson landed a job as a clerk with royal bank Coutts, followed by a string of jobs with other banks, ending up with Barings, where he quickly made an impression and was promoted to the trading floor.

Before long, he was appointed manager of a new operation in futures markets on the Singapore Monetary Exchange (SIMEX) and was soon making millions for Barings by betting on the future direction of the Nikkei Index. His bosses back in London, who viewed with glee his large profits, trusted the whizzkid. Leeson and his wife Lisa seemed to have everything: a salary of £50,000 with bonuses of up to £150,000, weekends in exotic places, a smart apartment and frequent parties and to top it all they even seemed to be very much in love.

Barings believed that it wasn't exposed to any losses because Leeson claimed that he was executing purchase orders on behalf of a client. What the company did not realise is that it was responsible for error account 88888 where Leeson hid his losses. This account had been set up to cover up a mistake made by an inexperienced team member, which led to a loss of £20,000. Leeson now used this account to cover his own mounting losses.

As the losses grew, Leeson requested extra funds to continue trading, hoping to extricate himself from the mess by more deals. Over three months he bought more than 20,000 futures contracts worth about $180,000 each in a vain attempt to move the market. Some three quarters of the $1.3 billion he lost Barrings resulted from these trades. When Barings executives discovered what had happened, they informed the Bank of England that Barings was effectively bust. In his wake Nick Leeson had wiped out the 233 year old Baring investment Bank, who proudly counted HM The Queen as a client. The $1.3 billion dollars of liabilities he had run up was more than the entire capital and reserves of the bank.

Eventually arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, Nick spent a few fraught months trying to escape extradition to Singapore. He failed and in December 1995 a court in Singapore sentenced him to six and a half years in prison. Lisa his wife got a job as an airhostess to be able to visit him regularly. At first, their marriage survived the strain of being apart, but what Lisa could not abide were his revelations of his infidelity with Geisha girls and she divorced him. Within months, Leeson was diagnosed as suffering from cancer of the colon. His weight plummeted and most of his hair fell out from chemotherapy.

Finally released in 1999, and despite his return to the UK bringing a realisation that the high life had been swept away - he was effectively homeless and without a job - Nick enjoyed a fairly hedonistic first year seeing friends and family but also continuing his cancer treatment.

Nick Leeson has proved his resilience and has been able to capitalise on his experiences. He was paid a substantial fee for the newspaper serialisation of his book in The Mail. The story was then turned into a film, Rogue Trader, starring Ewan McGregor. During 2001 he undertook a Psychology degree and Nick now spends much of his time presenting talks to companies on Risk Management and undertaking after-dinner and conference speaking based on his life experiences.

With a psychology degree and a second marriage to Irish beautician Leona Tormay, (with her own children Kersty and Alex) after trying for a baby they were delighted when, in 2004, Leona gave birth to a baby boy. Nick comments; “I'm of the mindset that cancer must not take you over and control your life. I do believe that the more positive you are, the greater your chance of survival." his advice to others is never to bottle up stress as he himself did: "You need to talk and express yourself as I now do to Leona. With cancer as with other problems, it's amazing how adaptable human beings are, and you will be able to cope provided you keep a strong frame of mind."

In April 2005 Nick was appointed Commercial Manager of Galway United Football Club, rising to the position of General Manager in late November 2005. The same year Nick published his second book Back from the Brink, Coping with Stress co-written with psychologist Ivan Tyrell. July 2007 saw his appointed as CEO of the football club where he remained in this position until his resignation in February 2011. Nick remains a shareholder of Galway United and continues to represent the club with the Football Association of Ireland.

Photo credited to Andrew Downes

Gilda Bresic
Electronic Sales Trading
RBS Equities (Australia)

Gilda joined Macquarie Group in 2006 in a Derivatives support role before moving on to Warrants and OTC sales. She joined the institutional equities sales trading desk in March, 2010 as DMA/Algo sales trader before moving to RBS in November of 2011. She is currently endeavouring to complete her Masters of Applied Finance through Kaplan.

Scott Caudell
Vice President, Information Technology Infrastructure
Interactive Data Corporation

Scott Caudell oversees Interactive Data's global technology infrastructure, networks, and data centers, as well as disaster recovery, business continuity and IT security.

Caudell previously served as senior vice president of global architecture for Interactive Data 7ticks, where he helped to design and develop highly sophisticated ultra-low latency trading networks for Interactive Data's clients.

Caudell joined 7ticks as a founder member in 2002. He designed and built 7ticks highly-scalable, carrier-grade network infrastructure to provide the fastest and most reliable trading experience for users on a variety of proprietary and third-party ISV trading solutions, and has seen this design grow to handle a significant percentage of overall daily trading volumes on exchanges such as the CME and ICE.

Caudell has also had a visionary role in creating proximity networks to support ultra-low latency access and cross-connectivity between leading world exchanges.

Dion Cooney
Head of Australian & US Sales
ITG Australia

Dion Cooney is Head of Australian & US Sales for ITG Australia, based in Sydney. He is responsible for Australian sales operations and also co-ordinates Asia-wide client coverage for the firm's U.S. clients trading into the region. He has worked for ITG for over 10 years, including four years based in New York heading up the global portfolio sales and trading business. Prior to joining ITG he held equity trading roles at CIBC and L&C Baillieu in Sydney.

Mark De Courcey
General Manager, Investment Administration
Perpetual

Years of experience: 26
Years at Perpetual: 12

Mark is the General Manager - Investment Administration. In this role he is responsible for overseeing the investment operations of our investment team which encompasses investment administration, the equities dealing desk and the solution group which provides technology support to the investment team. The responsibilities are broad within the team and Mark is primarily responsible for the strategies for each of these divisions within his group and to ensure the fund managers can concentrate on core roles without operational concerns.

Mark joined Perpetual in October 1999 as Investment Administration Manager and was promoted to General Manager in March 2010. Mark has over 25 years industry experience, and prior to joining Perpetual worked at Thomson Financial Services, Rothschild Australia Asset Management and Qantas Airways.

Mark has a Bachelor of Business from Charles Sturt University.

Jon Fatica
Head of Analytics
TradingScreen, Inc.

Jon Fatica is the Head of Analytics within TradingScreen and directly responsible for all aspects of the TCA service. He joined TradingScreen in September 2011 from ITG where he managed the transaction cost analysis group.

TradingScreen, Inc. embeds best-execution TCA in its multi-asset class Execution Management System, which connects a wide range of investment managers to global markets and brokers. Jon's focus is to deliver next generation and seamless TCA analytics for each asset class via Real-time monitoring, intra-day Execution Analyses, and Traditional TCA reporting and consulting. These decision support tools provide managers and traders with actionable information that minimizes transaction costs.

During his career, Mr. Fatica has developed expertise in risk management, trading and investment management, and management consulting across the financial services industry. His career includes stints at JP Morgan, First Boston, Bankers Trust, Lazard Asset Management, in risk management, portfolio management and fixed income trading.

Mr. Fatica earned a B.A in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton Graduate School.

David Firmin
Executive Director, Head of GTR, Asia
Instinet

David Firmin is head of Instinet's Global Trading Research group in Asia and is responsible for algorithmic trading product and development as well as pre-, real-time and post-trade analytics for the region. David joined Instinet in 2002 as part of their European algorithmic trading team. Before moving to Asia in early 2012, he held senior roles in the algorithmic and systematic trading groups of both Instinet New York and Instinet Europe specialising in the design and development of cash equity algorithmic trading strategies.

Prior to joining Instinet, David worked as a business and technical analyst in London and Frankfurt for Capco, a consulting firm specialising in the finance industry. David holds an MSci (Hons) degree in Chemistry having studied at the University of Bristol, UK and the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Alex Frino
CEO, Capital Markets Co-operative Research Centre (CMCRC)
Professor of Finance at the University of Sydney

Alex Frino is CEO of Capital Markets Co-operative Research Centre (CMCRC) and Professor of Finance at the University of Sydney. He has a PhD in Finance from the University of Sydney and a Master of Philosophy in Finance from Cambridge University.

Alex has strong links with both capital markets industry and academia in Australia and internationally and is a major advocate and motivator for closer collaboration between the two.

Alex has published more than 100 research papers and one book and he has held visiting appointments at the Sydney Futures Exchange and Credit Suisse First Boston. He is a Certified Practising Accountant and serves on the Disciplinary Tribunal of the Australian Securities Exchange.

James Hardcastle
Head of Sales - Australia
Fidessa

James Hardcastle is Head of Sales for Fidessa in Australia where he has been based for the last year. James joined Fidessa in 1998 as a Technical Consultant based in London and worked on projects for numerous tier-one investment banks across Europe. Prior to Sydney James was based at Fidessa's Tokyo office, where he lived for 11 years, and was most recently Head of International Sales there. In Japan James was an active member of the FPL Education & Marketing committee and helped coordinate the bi-annual FIX conference. James has a BSc Honours degree in Computer Science & Business Studies from Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, and in his spare time enjoys running, cycling and travelling.

Trent Hayes
Equity and Derivatives Execution Specialist

Equity and derivatives execution specialist with a proven track record in building and improving a dealing desk's execution capabilities to compete in a constantly evolving trading environment.

Respected in the industry for knowledge of dealing technologies and the changing market structure. Currently a member of the Sydney Quorum 15 Group providing thought leadership on market structure and execution efficiency.

Most recently, Trent was the Head of Equity Dealing of AMP Capital. Prior to that, he worked for Deutsche Asset Management, Colonial First State and Westpac Investment Management.

Paul Hilgers
Chief Executive Officer, Asia Pacific
Optiver

Paul Hilgers started his career in 1992 as a trader for Amsterdam Options Trader, a market maker in Germany on the German and Swiss derivative market. Between 1997 and 2003 he was the Managing Director of Van der Moolen in Germany, responsible for the German and Swiss market. In 2003 Paul was transferred to Amsterdam to run the European trading desk at Van der Moolen.

Paul moved to Sydney in 2005, taking on the role of Commercial Director for Fortis Clearing Asia Pacific. In 2007 Paul joined Optiver as the Director of Market Structure, Asia Pacific and was promoted to CEO of Asia Pacific in January 2010. Subsequently he also joined the Global Management Board of Optiver.

Ben Jefferys
Head of Trading Solutions
Iress Market Technology

Ben Jefferys commenced with IRESS early in 2010 working in the area of trading solutions where he plays an active part of new development projects and major client initiatives. As Head of Trading Solutions, Ben is based in Sydney and is overseeing the adaptation of smart order routing and dark pool technologies in Australia. Over the years Ben has worked in a variety of roles with electronic trading and order routing as a focus both in Sydney and London.

Jason Keady
Director, Markets & Operations
Chi-X Australia

Jason is the Director of Markets & Operations at Chi-X Australia, which includes responsibility for business development, operations and market structure development.

Prior to joining Chi-X, Jason was a Senior Partner at FiNETIK Partners, a financial markets consulting and advisory business specialising in the markets of the Asian region and before that he worked at ASX for over 10 years in a number of senior executive roles.

Jason Lapping
Head of Asia Pacific Trading
Dimensional (Australia)

Jason Lapping heads Dimensional's equity trading desk for Asia Pacific. His focus is on ensuring the firm's execution strategies and technological infrastructure region meet the highest standards in the region.

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 has been at Dimensional since 2010. He brings deep knowledge and experience of global markets, including in depth knowledge of Asia Pacific's unique market microstructure. Much of Jason's experience was garnered over 14 years working around the world with Societe Generale in their equities derivatives division and heading desks in London, Paris, Hong Kong and Sydney.

Reporting to Glenn Crane in Sydney, Jason works with a regional team of seven traders and is an integral part of an international trading network headed by the London-based John Romiza.

Edward Mangles
Regional Director, Asia Pacific, FIX Protocol Ltd and
Director, FIXGlobal

Mr. Edward Mangles is the founder and Publisher of FIXGlobal, the official publication of the FIX Protocol. He has a long history within the financial technology sector and has worked closely with FPL for a number of years. He has supported the organisation’s Asia Pacific committee for the past 10 years, playing a key role in promoting FIX adoption across the region. He has also worked for leading financial publishing and marketing firms in both London and Hong Kong. In March 09 Mr. Edward Mangles was appointed FPL Asia Pacific Regional Director.

Kelvin Ng
Asia Pacific BTCA Product Specialist
Bloomberg

Kelvin Ng is the Asia Pacific BTCA Product Specialist at Bloomberg and responsible for the TCA analytical product and service. Prior to this, he was a Quantitative Analyst in ITG analyzing and providing TCA consultations to clients in Asia.

Kelvin holds a Master of Business Administration from Queen's University and a Bachelor degree in Software Engineering from University of Western Ontario in Canada.

Murrough O'Brien
Head of Australia & NZ Electronic Execution
Citi

Murrough O'Brien is Head of Electronic Execution for Australia & New Zealand, based in Sydney. Murrough joined Citigroup London in 2006, before moving to Sydney in 2009 and has over 12 years' experience in the financial markets. Murrough’s Electronic Execution responsibilities include DMA and Algo sales & trading, Connectivity, Market Microstructure analysis and Crossing Networks/Dark Pools. Murrough has also played an active role in market reform, working closely with both the buyside, sellside and local exchanges/regulators. Prior to joining Citigroup Sydney, Murrough worked in business and technical roles at JP Morgan, UBS, Nomura and HVB-Unicredit in both New York and London.

Yemi Oluwi
Head of Client Services - Australia
Ullink

Yemi Oluwi is responsible for providing solutions to Ullinks's clients using Ullink's low latency connectivity and trading products, and supporting their ongoing usage. Yemi has over 15 years' experience in financial markets IT. Prior to Ullink Yemi has implemented FIX based trading solutions for UBS and Deutsche Bank.

James Patterson
CTO
BT Global Banking & Financial Markets

Currently regional CTO for BT's Global Banking and Financial Markets unit, which encompasses BT's Radianz and Unified Trading product portfolios, as well as BT's major network and outsourcing deals in this sector.

More than 10 years experience in building products for global financial markets; headed the engineering design at Radianz in London as we built the world's largest financial community (over 16,000 members on-net consuming more than 500 services). James has bachelor of computer engineering, master of science in telecoms business and am a CCIE.

Ben Radclyffe
Head of Electronic Trading, Australia
Deutsche Bank

Ben is responsible for Deutsche Bank's HFT, DMA and Algorithmic Trading products in Australia. He has over 10 years of experience in global electronic trading in both front office and technology roles.

David Raper
General Manager of Trade Execution and Information Services
Australian Securities Exchange

David has responsibility for trade execution, information and technical services at ASX. This includes services such as TradeMatch and Centre Point as well as the ASX Australian Liquidity Centre (ALC) and ASX Net.

Ben Read
Global Execution Services
Bank of America Merrill Lynch Australia

Ben is responsible for Merrill Lynch's DMA and algorithmic trading product in Australia. This comprises of sales and trading coverage, product development and market structure consultancy.

Ben has 8 years of experience in global electronic trading. Prior to joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch in 2009, he held electronic trading coverage roles at both Citi and ITG in London.

Michael G. Rude
Executive Director, Head of Electronic Trading - Asia Pacific ex-Japan
Goldman Sachs

Michael oversees Goldman Sachs' Electronic Trading business (GSET) in Asia. He's responsible for developing and executing the region's business objectives across electronic trading channels, liquidity strategies, and the products and services that constitute the firm's direct market access and algorithmic offering. Michael was formerly Head of Product Development for GSET Asia, co-managed Product Development for the Americas and led global business development for electronic listed derivatives offering. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Michael worked at consultancies Capco and PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he focused on strategic and technology initiatives at major financial services companies. Michael’s professional career started at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Michael earned a Masters in Business Administration from New York University's Stern School of Business and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota.

Raymond Russell
CTO & Co-Founder
Corvil

Raymond is a founder of Corvil and co-inventor of its core technology. Since 2000, Raymond has played an instrumental role in building a strong company and product suite around the core Corvil technology, covering many areas such as network science, product management, technical sales, and field engineering.

As Chief Technology Officer, Raymond is focused on driving continued advancement and fulfilment of Corvil's innovations with a focus on applications and infrastructure in capital markets. Recently, Raymond has led intensive investigations into latency issues impacting proprietary trading firm applications and utilised this experience to improve Corvil's product offering.

David Snowdon
Principal
Zeptonics

David Snowdon is a principal at Zeptonics, a provider of innovative solutions for latency-sensitive networking. In his role there he has conceived and designed the company's hardware products. He is interested in finding elegant hardware and software solutions to improve the performance of financial systems.

David brings together a unique set of skills. He's spent time working in high frequency trading, primarily in Asian markets, and so understands the critical role that network and computing design and infrastructure play in the profitability of such businesses. Prior to entering the world of finance, David completed a PhD, looking at operating-system level power management. He was also involved with Sunswift, a university project where he built and raced several solar powered cars in the World Solar Challenge. He and his team presently hold the Guiness world record for the fastest solar powered car.

Tim Thurman
Chief Information Officer
Australian Securities Exchange

Tim Thurman is Senior IT Executive with more than 24 years of technical and project management experience in building, deploying and supporting high availability (HA) low-latency financial applications and infrastructure with Exchanges, Alternative Trading Systems (ATS), and Investment Banks.

Currently, Tim holds the position of Chief Information Officer (CIO) with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) responsible for all information technology for the Group.

Prior to this, Tim held the position of Head of Information Technology with Credit Suisse Canada responsible for all aspects of strategic IT planning, implementation, and support of all Canadian Branches.

Prior to this Tim held the position of Head of Client Development with Alpha Trading Systems Canada the largest ATS in Canada. As a member of the senior management team, Tim was responsibilities for building the Alpha client base (Dealers and Vendors), on-board new clients, product pricing, real-time market data and client relationship management.

Prior to joining Alpha Tim held the position of Vice President and Director, Alternative Execution Group (AEG) with TD Newcrest a division of TD Securities. Before joining TD Newcrest, Tim held several Director level positions with the Toronto Stock Exchange (TMX Group). The 9 years prior to joining the TMX Group, Tim was with the World Wide Competency Centre for Exchanges and Electronic Markets at IBM Global Services.

David Wilkinson
Senior Director, Business Development
Equinix Asia-Pacific

David joined Equinix in July 2002 and is currently responsible for the Financial Services vertical for Equinix across the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to his current role within Equinix, David was the Managing Director of Equinix Japan for a period of seven years.

David has spent 20 years living and working in Asia and has primarily focused his career on the development of businesses in the region.

Prior to joining Equinix, Mr. Wilkinson served as President of CCC Network Systems K.K. for four and half years, where he led CCC's entry into both the Japanese and Korean markets, providing infrastructure services and server farm management solutions primarily to data center operators, financial institutions, and large corporate institutions. Prior to CCC, Mr. Wilkinson worked for the Fujitsu Group for more than ten years, both inside and outside of Japan. Most recently at Fujitsu, Mr. Wilkinson was Vice President of Business Development for ICL Japan (a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu), which specialized in the introduction and promotion of European technologies into the Japanese market.

Mr. Wilkinson graduated from Glasgow University, United Kingdom, with a First Class Honours Degree in Computing Science, Physics and Mathematics.

Susannah Wood
Director - Autobahn Sales FX, Rates & Credit
Deutsche Bank AG Australia & New Zealand

Susannah Wood is responsible for Deutsche Bank's Electronic Sales across Fixed Income, FX and Listed Derivatives in Australia & New Zealand. Susannah joined Deutsche Bank in 2006, based in London running the Equities European Electronic Sales team where she specialised in coverage of Quantitative/Systematic clients. Prior to joining Deutsche Bank Susannah worked at Citigroup in Sydney for 2 years, as their Equities Pan-Asian Algorithmic Product Manager and for 6 years at Goldman Sachs in the Equities Electronic Sales team, based in London and New York. Susannah has a First Class BSc Hons.in Computer Science & Management Studies, from University College London (UCL).

Greg Yanco
Senior Executive Leader, Market & Participant Supervision
Australian Securities and Investments Commission

Greg Yanco is Senior Executive Leader of the Market & Participant Supervision team at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The Market & Participant Supervision team has responsibility for overseeing compliance by market participants with licence conditions, market integrity rules and for market surveillance.

Greg Yanco is former Chief Executive Officer of AXE ECN, a joint venture formed to provide an alternative venue to trade Australian listed securities.

Prior to this Greg was at the Australian Stock Exchange (1986-2006) where he managed diversified teams within ASX's regulatory and commercial environments covering market structure and product management, client relations, market surveillance and broker compliance.

Greg has extensive experience and knowledge in financial market development, regulation and supervision.