Sanjay AwasthiSanjay Awasthi is a Director at Eastspring Investments (Singapore) Limited. Sanjay has close to 22 years of experience in the Securities Market and trades equity and derivatives.
Sejal BajariaSejal Bajaria recently joined Ullink as a Director of ASEAN Australia and India Sales, helping advise institutions with technology and algorithmic solutions. In her 15 years of experience, Sejal has worked in both in Equity Sales and Electronic Sales Trading, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the Asian equity markets, with clients ranging from Asia to the US. Based in Singapore, Sejal constantly educates herself on forward-thinking industry initiatives to help consult on industry editorials and events. Sejal is Team Leader of the FIX Trading Community’s NextGen Group.
Duncan BeggDuncan Begg is Head of Electronic Execution Products for ITG in the Asia Pacific region. He and his team are responsible for overseeing the design and implementation of electronic execution products such as algorithms, smart order routers, block matching systems and crossing engines. Having joined ITG in 2003 he has worked in the European and Asian offices of ITG and in both regions primarily acted as a product specialist covering electronic trading products.
Duncan holds degrees in Finance and Law from the University of New South Wales (Sydney).
Damian BiermanDamian Bierman is the Head of Asia-Pacific for Portware LLC, a FactSet Company, based in Hong Kong. He is responsible for directing Portware's operations throughout APAC and for overseeing its client services, account management, and technical support teams.
Damian is also an active member of the FIX Trading Community, currently serving as Co-Chair of the Asia-Pacific Technical Subcommittee. He has been a mainstay of the organization’s Asia-Pacific presence for the past 12 years, playing an active role in promoting the adoption of FIX across the region.
Prior to Portware, Damian was Director of FIX Product Services in APAC for Javelin Technologies (a subsidiary of NYFIX, Inc), relocating to Hong Kong in 2004 to establish the firm's Asia presence and to develop its regional FIX product offering. Prior to this, Damian lead Javelin's Quality Assurance team, building a robust testing process for the firm's FIX technology suite. Damian joined Javelin in 2000 as a Client Manager, based in New York, implementing FIX technology at a long list of buy- and sell-side institutions.
Prior to his career in financial technology, Damian held a research position at Carnegie Mellon Research Institute, where he was involved with the DOT-funded Driver Drowsiness Detection & Countermeasures study, and contributed to the development of a threshold-based, infrared camera system for non-invasively detecting driver drowsiness based on percentage eye closure. Following its completion, Damian was involved in a study of expert landmine detection skill for the US Army, where he helped to develop a robust training protocol for novice operators based on critical elements of expert landmine detection performance. Through the course of his research, Damian has four journal publications to his credit.
Damian received his B.S. in Cognitive Science from Carnegie Mellon University in May 1997.
Drew BrickDrew Brick is part of Bloomberg's Global Market Group and is responsible for assisting core product teams with identifying, planning for and managing business development and market structure change.
Drew has over 25 years of buy-side and sell-side experience. On the buy-side, Drew was a senior Portfolio Manager and Global Strategist for the fixed income asset manager, PIMCO. He was a member of PIMCO’s Global Investment Committee. He was on the Board of Directors for PIMCO Global Advisors Asia. He was also a partner and portfolio manager for PIMCO's U.S.-based macro hedge fund GreenRidge Asset Management.
On the sell-side, Drew served as Managing Director and Head of Portfolio Management and Markets Strategy at RBS and BNP Paribas.
Drew has lectured on International Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and on Asian Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University -- the latter of which where he earned and worked on his Masters and Ph.D., respectively.
Rory CainesRory Caines is a member of the iShares APAC Capital Markets team in Hong Kong. Rory is responsible for providing ETF execution services and product structure expertise, helping clients to understand and take advantage of ETF liquidity.
Rory is also responsible for Fixed Income ETF strategy and distribution in APAC, managing strategic relationships with banks and broker / dealer partners.
Rory joined BlackRock in London, before relocating to Asia in 2015. He is a member of the APAC Out & Allies Committee.
Rory earned a BA with honors from the University of Leeds.
Chan Kum KongMr. Chan is the Head of Research and Products at Singapore Exchange (SGX), he is responsible for the research content and securities products development and management. He has over 20 years of experience in the finance industry.
Prior to SGX, he was the Investment Director at DBS Asset Management, managing the suite of funds. Before DBS Asset Management, Mr. Chan was the senior analyst covering the technology sector in Seoul at Nomura Securities and subsequently assumed the role of Head of Research in Shanghai. Prior to Nomura Securities, he was at Bank of America Equity Partners, a private equity investment firm.
Abhishek ChoudharyAbhishek is a Vice President in the Execution Advisory Services team within Citi’s Markets and Securities Services business in Asia Pacific. Based in Hong Kong, his role covers cross-channel execution sales, execution consulting and microstructure research for Citi’s institutional clients throughout the region. Abhishek has over 7 years’ experience in Equity Trading Analytics and specializes in helping clients understand the source of their trading costs, how to reduce them and how they are impacted by the ever-changing market microstructure. Prior to joining Citi, Abhishek worked at ITG and Nomura. Abhishek holds a BTech in Engineering from IIT-Delhi and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).
Christopher ChuaChristopher is the senior dealer responsible for equities, derivatives, and currency swaps trading at Eastspring Investments. As a multi asset regional dealer, Christopher skillset extends beyond Asia ex Japan, and into Latin America and EMEA. Chris also supports Eastspring’s Tactical Asset Allocation team in optimizing investment returns through innovative trading strategies including the usage of RFQ platforms or the primary market in trading ETFs. The latter being a core expertise Christopher has mastered over the years as the asset class gained interest among investors in recent years.
Christopher joined Eastspring Investments (formerly known as Prudential Asset Management) in 2008. His early days were spent as a Floor Trader in SIMEX (Open outcry) for 5 years and then at Man Financial where he managed the institutional clients' orders in equity/interest rate derivatives. Christopher later joined DBS Bank as an Institutional Desk Manager to oversee the overall execution and operations of the team.
Christopher holds a Bachelor of Business (Banking & Finance) from Monash University.
Martin DavidMartin David is responsible for managing the Asian Trading Desk and coordinating the philosophy and trading process across the region. He is located in the Singapore office.
Prior to joining UBS, Martin worked in Barclays as Asian Head of Quantitative Equity Trading, BAML as Asian Head of Quantitative Statistical Arbitrage, Deutsche Bank as Japan Head of QP1 and Lehman Brothers as equity quant.
Martin has a strong background in quantitative and electronic trading and has spent his entire career in Asia.
Roland De MarsangyRoland has helped Liquidnet expand its geographical presence since joining in 2012. An initial focus on continental European members quickly expanded to include several strategic London accounts. He has also developed the trading platform expansion in emerging markets, including the launch of the on-shore South African market in 2015. In September 2016, Roland relocated to Hong Kong to lead Liquidnet’s business development and market structure efforts in the Asia-Pacific region (currently active in 13 markets).
Roland has a depth of industry experience, previously working at Bloomberg in 2005 before working in Seychelles on the equities desk of an Austrian quant-driven hedge fund in 2009. Roland was listed in Brummel Magazine’s “30 Ones to Watch” in 2014 and Financial News’ “40 Under 40 Rising Stars in Trading and Technology” in 2015.
Matt EddyMatt Eddy is part of Thomson Reuters Customer Proposition team and runs the Enterprise proposition for Asia. Based in Singapore, he is responsible for setting the strategy for the content, distribution and value-add services that Thomson Reuters offers in the region.
Prior to Thomson Reuters, Matt was head of the market data and enterprise services team at Standard Chartered in Singapore and before that, he managed the Trading Technology Engineering team for JP Morgan in New York. Matt started his career in Financial Services technology at Reuters in London.
Dan EnstedtDan Enstedt joined FlexTrade in February 2016 and is spearheading the establishment of FlexTrade’s multi-asset business operations in Australia and New Zealand. He has more than 10 years of experience in the FinTech / electronic trading space, covering both the buy-side and sell-side.
Dan holds a Master of Science degree in Business Administration and Economics from the University of Stockholm.
Christopher FrieseChristopher Friese is responsible for Société Générale’s Lyxor ETF set of products in Asia. He is based in Hong Kong since February 2017 and joined Société Générale in 2013 as Lyxor ETF Institutional Sales for Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe. He had sole responsibility for building the Lyxor ETF business in Eastern Europe and covered institutional clients in Germany and Austria. Prior to joining Société Générale, Christopher worked for Royal Bank of Scotland where he was part to the Institutional Sales team of the RBS Market Access ETF range promoting ETFs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Chris also worked for Barclays Global Investors and BlackRock Asset Management, where he was an essential part of the iShares Product Development Team and iShares Institutional Sales Team for Germany and Austria. He holds a Bachelor of Science in International Business Administration from RSM/ Erasmus University and a MBA degree from Munich Business School.
Arjen GaasbeekArjen Gaasbeek started his career in 2002 as a marketmaker in Equity options with Optiver in Amsterdam and Sydney. Arjen then went on to become the senior Risk manager for the APAC region with ABN Amro Clearing in Sydney.
In early 2008 Arjen moved to the Korean Ingensoma Trading Group in Seoul to trade Kospi200 Index options. Late 2008 he set-up and headed the Hong Kong office for Ingensoma and started market making operations in options and cash equity. Then in September 2013 he set-up a trading operation under TCG Capital, a family office. In 2016 he moved onto become Managing Director of Flow Traders Asia based in Singapore.
Ofir GefenOfir is Managing Director, Asia Pacific Japan for ULLINK, responsible for sales and customer-facing operations in the region. He recently joined ULLINK after 18 years with ITG, where he had successfully developed and oversaw strategic initiatives to grow revenue in the areas of electronic execution, algorithmic trading and analytics. Prior to joining ITG he worked at Intel for a number of years. Ofir holds a B.Sc in Information Systems Engineering and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Daniel GerardDan Gerard is the head of the Advisory Solutions group for the Asia Pacific region. The Advisory Solutions group is part of State Street Global Exchange (SSGX) and crafts bespoke investment solutions and investable models for institutional asset owners and managers around the globe. Previously, Dan ran the North American Equity Research Sales group at State Street Global Markets in Boston, providing investment ideas and strategies to the portfolio managers and investment analysts at mutual funds, hedge funds, and investment advisors. Previous to State Street, Dan spent over a decade at Brown Brothers Harriman in London, Zurich, and New York in multi-asset research, sales, and relationship roles at the private bank.
Julien HageJulien Hage is based in Hong Kong and runs Electronic Trading Solutions for Societe Generale in Asia which covers Portfolio Trading, Electronic Quantitative Solutions and Algo Factory teams.
Prior to this, Julien Hage was head of portfolio trading and dealing at BNP Paribas for Asia and before that, he was deputy head of trading for AXA Rosenberg in London.
Julien Hage holds a masters degree in computer science as well as a postgraduate degree in Financial Engineering from SKEMA business school in France.
Maxence HardyBased in Hong Kong, Maxence Hardy leads the Linear Quantitative Research and Execution Services Algo Trading Product teams. He and his teams are responsible for the research and development underpinning JP Morgan’s Asia Pacific algorithmic trading product suite. In particular, the LQR team is in charge of developing the quantitative models driving decisions made by the trading algorithms.
Prior to relocating to Hong Kong, Maxence spent six years with JP Morgan in New York where he most lately also led the equities Linear Quantitative Research team.
Jay HurleyJay is the Regional Head of eFX, APAC for State Street since joining the firm in 2016. Prior to this, Jay spent five years at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong and eight years at Morgan Stanley in both London and Hong Kong in eFX trading. He has spent his 19 year financial services career in electronic trading starting in equities at Morgan Stanley and UBS.
Jay is an eleven year veteran of the FIX community: he has co-chaired the FX Technical Subcommittee, the FX Committee, and was elected to co-chair the FICC (Fixed Income, Currencies, Commodities) Committee in 2014 and is an active member of the Asia Pacific Steering Committee.
Jay received a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh.
Nizam IsmailNizam Ismail is Partner and Head of financial services of RHTLaw Taylor Wessing LLP. He is co-founder of RHT Compliance Solutions, a dedicated financial services compliance consultancy/solutions provider in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Nizam has worked with regulators, exchanges, markets, banks, broker-dealers, commodities firms, fund managers, trust companies, financial advisers and corporates in a wide range of regulatory compliance and legal issues.
Nizam has 25 years of experience and expertise in financial services regulatory compliance and litigation.
He was formerly Executive Director and Head of Compliance for Southeast Asia in Morgan Stanley, Senior Vice President and Head of Compliance for Southeast Asia at Lehman Brothers Singapore, Executive Director (Legal and Compliance) in Nomura Singapore and Senior Legal Counsel of Citigroup (Corporate and Investment Bank).
Nizam spent six years as a regulator at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, where he was Deputy Director and Head of the Market Conduct Policy Division. There, Nizam worked on various policy reviews relating to the capital markets, including various policy reviews leading to the enactment of the Securities and Futures Act, the Financial Advisers Act and the Business Trust Act.
Nizam started his career as a Deputy Public Prosecutor/State Counsel at the Commercial Affairs Department, where he prosecuted corporate and securities fraud cases, including corruption, cheating, criminal breach of trust, insider trading and market manipulation.
Jyotindra KanekarJyo is the Vice President of Autobahn Equity Sales Trading of Deutsche Securities and has been covering the Asia Pacific region since October 2016. Prior to that, his primary coverage was the India markets. Jyo is based in Singapore.
Eugene KanevskyEugene Kanevsky joined CLSA in November 2009 as Head of Electronic Sales, focusing on building out the electronic execution business. In May 2015 he was promoted to Global Head of Electronic Trading.
Eugene started his career in 1998 at Macquarie Bank, Sydney, where he established the firm’s DMA business. Subsequently moving to HK in 2006 as a founding member of the map-Asia Electronic Trading team.
Josephine KimJosephine Kim is responsible for Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Global Execution Services (GES) Sales in Asia Pacific. GES provides Direct Market Access, multi asset algorithmic strategies, analytics and execution consulting services throughout the world. Josephine actively participates in industry consultations through various expert opinion editorials and events across Asia Pacific. She is also a Co-Chair of FIX Trading Community Singapore Working Group.
Daniel LeeDaniel Lee has 21 years of experience in stock broking. He is responsible for the Electronic Trading (DMA) and ETF business. Prior to joining DBS Vickers, Daniel worked in equity sales, sales trading and research with WI Carr. Before that he was doing research at the University of Cambridge.
Daniel holds an first class honours degree from the Queen's University of Belfast. He also holds an MBA and a LL.M.
Stephane LeroyStephane is a successful business entrepreneur and visionary for the AI and Algorithmic trading market. Stephane has a proven track record of continuous success in how to turn innovative ideas into profitable businesses. As business founder of QuantHouse, Stephane was instrumental in changing the original positioning of QuantHouse as a Hedge Fund to a successful Financial Technology provider providing leading edge API based automated trading tools. As a senior manager for Radianz, Stephane built the business and a successful team from scratch throughout Europe opening offices in multiple countries and bringing more than 1200 clients into the Radianz Cloud community within 5 years. The Radianz business was sold to BT in 2005 in a nine-digit deal generating impressive returns for shareholders.
Mr. Leroy holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science Engineering from ESME/SUDRIA of Paris with a major in Mathematics and Computer Science. He holds also a Master’s Degree in strategic marketing from HEC Paris.
Edward ManglesEdward Mangles has helped support The FIX Trading Community’s Asia Pacific committee for the past 14 years, playing a key role in promoting 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. Edward also established the GlobalTrading journal, alongside the www.fixglobal.com site, which focusses on institutional trading issues around the world and is the official journal of the FIX Trading Community.
Roger McAvoyRoger McAvoy joined HKEX in August 2017 as head of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (“SEHK”) and Hong Kong Futures Exchange (“HKFE”) Singapore branches, both wholly-owned subsidiaries of HKEX. He is responsible for marketing, investor education and promotion of HKEX-listed products and services of the SEHK & HKFE, including market updates on Connect initiatives such as Stock Connect and Bond Connect.
Before joining HKEX, he was responsible for Asia institutional sales and relationship management of Deutsche Boerse’s OTC FX electronic trading technology, data and analytics. In prior roles, he led MSCI’s Equity Index Benchmark Data and Portfolio Management Analytics businesses in Asia Pacific and the EMEAI regions, and had spent his earlier career leading client coverage and commercial product management teams at Thomson Financial and Tradeweb International helping buy-side customers with their investment management and trading technology, data and analytics.
Mr. McAvoy holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Boston College, and a Masters of Business Administration from the New York Institute of Technology. He has been a member of the FIX Trading Community’s Asia Pacific Education & Marketing Committee and the Global OTC Products Committee. He is also a member of the Singapore Institute of Directors and ACI Singapore – The Financial Markets Association.
Jim NortheyJim Northey has over twenty-five years’ experience as a manager, consultant, and implementer within the capital markets industry. He is a Senior Vice President of Strategic Research focusing on Protocol Engineering and Standards at Itiviti Group AB, following acquisition of The LaSalle Technology Group, LLC in 2015, which he co-founded in 2006. He currently serves as a co-chair of the FIX Global Technical Committee and was recently approved as the next chair of ISO TC68, the ISO Technical Committee for Financial Services. Jim is convener of ISO TC68/SC9/WG1 addressing semantics for ISO 20022.
Jim is a past member of the US Treasury OFR Advisory Committee and the US CFTC Technology Advisory Committee Subcommittee on HFT. He previously served in the roles of FIX Americas Region Co-chair and the co-chair of the FIX Global Derivatives Committee. Jim was awarded the FIA Annual Achievement award in 2006 as part of the team that created FIXML for listed derivatives clearing standardization.
Jim holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Indianapolis and an M.S. in Financial Markets and Trading from Illinois Institute of Technology. Jim is an adjunct instructor of Finance at Michigan Technological University where he teaches Derivatives and Financial Engineering.
Ned PhillipsFormer Managing Director and now an entrepreneur, Ned Phillips is the founder and chief executive officer of Bambu.
Ned Phillips has been based in Asia for the past 25 years; starting his journey in FinTech since 1999 with E*TRADE as one of the very first online brokers before becoming Managing Director in 2007. He was part of the transformation of the stock exchange where he developed two pan-Asian exchange, one of which is in conjunction with SCX and Chi-X. Ned had the opportunity to experience the first dot-com boom with one of the original FinTech companies as well as become appointed as consultant to 8 Securities when they launched the first Robo Advisor in Asia.
With such an insightful exposure and development over the years, Ned saw an opportunity in the B2B space to build a solution for various sectors that lead to the birth of Bambu.
Since 2016, Bambu has accomplished many rewarding milestones: launched Singapore’s first Robo Advisor, won Best Early Stage Startup at FinTech Finals 2017, Finalist in SuperCharger 2.0 Accelerator program and finalist in Jumpstarter 2017 organised by Alibaba Entrepreneur Fund.
Hugh SpencerFor the past 6 years Hugh has worked at and now runs Equity trading at Janus Capital Singapore, recently merged to be Janus Henderson Investors. This role has oversight over the trading of regional cash equities, futures, OTC derivative and forex. Prior to his time on the buyside, Hugh worked on the sell side with large firms such as NewEdge and UBS Securities. As the Head of Trading at Janus Henderson Investors, he is best suited to give his insights on block trading, technology developments and broker relationships in Asia.
Curtis TaiCurtis joined Jane Street in 2015 to expand its ETF Sales and Trading functions to Asia-Pacific from New York and London. Prior to this, he was a Senior Vice President and ETF Specialist at CSOP Asset Management Ltd with a focus on institutional sales and client portfolio management. Curtis was also a Manager at China Asset Management (HK) Ltd (ChinaAMC), responsible for their ETFs business including Capital Markets and Institutional Sales, where he helped to launch the world’s first RQFII ETF investing into onshore China. He also worked at Yuanta SIT in Taiwan, developing international business in ETF and indexing solutions and advisory. Mr. Tai received a BSBA degree from Washington University in St Louis.
Scott TreloarScott has 20 years of financial markets experience. He heads up Noviscient, a next-generation investment manager based in Singapore.
He worked as Chief Risk Officer and Portfolio Manager at an alternative investment firm for four years, as well as eight years heading up a quantitative team within Deutsche Bank’s Asian trading business in Singapore. Before that he worked in venture capital with Macquarie Bank for five years.
Scott has been programming since the first PCs appeared in the 1980’s. He works in Python and has a specific interest is the application of machine learning to financial time series.
Scott has a BEng, an MBA, a Master of Quantitative Finance and he is completing a PhD in Finance with EDHEC.
David WhitneyDavid Whitney is Spectracom’s Director for Time Sensitive Networks (TSN) for the Asia Region. Mr. Whitney’s role is to manage the company’s growth of resilient PNT solutions into a range of local and international financial services clients encompassing network time synchronization and GPS resilience. Mr. Whitney and his Singapore based colleagues focus on time sources and providing thought leadership around precision time (PTP) in parallel with MIFID2 regulatory requirements and delivering time as a service (TAAS) to datacenter partners in the region.
David has been living and working in the Asia Pacific region for more than twenty years as a business development and sales leadership executive working with a range of start-up tech firms and legacy technology businesses including Solarflare Communications, Netlist and Stratus. Mr. Whitney also started two successful component trading businesses in the region during his tenure.
David has a BS from the College of Wooster in Ohio and studied at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Phillip YeoPhillip Yeo heads international product development at Nikko Asset Management. This is a new role whereby he oversees product units based in Singapore as well as Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Japan. The teams reporting to Phillip administer the entire Nikko AM suite of fund products domiciled outside Japan – comprising funds in Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, Mauritius, Hong Kong and Singapore, and including ETFs listed on the Singapore Exchange.
Phillip has been with the firm for more than 10 years, and brings with him over 20 years of experience in the finance and investment sector including corporate banking, private equity investing, sell‐side research and corporate acquisitions. Over the past decade, as Head of Product Development and Management in the Singapore office, he was responsible for leading the initiative to streamline and rationalise the suite of unit trust products Singapore through a fund merger and reshaping programme. He contributed to the firm’s growth in AUM through the launch of new products and under his leadership, the average AUM per fund doubled as the number of funds was streamlined down from approximately 55 to 40.
A notable successful product reshape was changing a Singapore equity fund in 2011 to focus on Singapore dividend equities. The fund grew more than tenfold over 3 years and remains one of the best‐selling products locally. Phillip was also responsible for leading and coordinating the launch of Nikko AM Asia High Yield Bond Fund which raised USD1.4b in 2012 and Nikko AM Chinese Bank CNH Fixed Term Investment Fund which raised USD1.2b in 2014. He has been a strong proponent of investing into ETFs, growing the AUM by approximately 45% in 2016.
Currently, Phillip serves on the board of Nikko AM Luxembourg S.A. He is also a member of the Development Committee at the Investment Management Association of Singapore.
Phillip studied at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and graduated with honours in Business. He has a Master of Business Administration from The Imperial College in London, UK. Phillip is also a Chartered Financial Analyst® charterholder and a Chartered Accountant with ISCA.
Andy YoungAndy Young has a strong understanding of the Capital Markets sector, gained from working successfully on technology solutions for global banks, exchanges, brokers, HFT's & other firms within the financial markets community. He leads a team of Sales Specialists, Business Development Managers and Solution Architects across Europe, Asia and the US. Andy is also responsible globally for sales of PrizmNet, Colt’s financial service extranet.
He has held a number of client facing roles since joining Colt in 2003, working with financial services customers across the globe to identify technology strategies to provide the fastest access to liquidity.
He started his working life as an FX broker at Harlow Butler before moving into the technology vendor space.
