Nick Leeson
Industry Commentator



Photo credited to Andrew Downes

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

Narendra Ahlawat
Head - Technology & CSQ
MCX Stock Exchange

Mr. Narendra Ahlawat is a veteran finance professional with over 25 years of experience, including 16 years in the Securities Industry. Owing to his long stint in this industry and hands-on experience in different aspects of securities and derivatives market, Mr. Ahlawat has gained a deep insight into policies and practices related to the sector.

At present, Mr. Ahlawat heads the Market Operations, Technology and Customer Service departments at MCX Stock Exchange (MCX-SX). Prior to his current role, he was managing the systems development for risk management and clearing and settlement processes of NSCCL, a subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

During his tenure at the NSCCL, he was instrumental in readying the systems for introduction of various products in the Indian Market, including implementation of VARbased margining in the Equities Segment, Mini Nifty, Long Dated Options and Securities Lending and Borrowing. He also played a key role in the development of Market Surveillance System and Index Computation System at NSE. He has a keen interest in Business Process Management and has made significant contributions for streamlining the processes of NSCCL.

While handling the Membership function of NSE, he managed the Member registration process during the launch of Derivatives Segment of the Exchange. During this tenure he was also responsible for ensuring compliance of members towards membership requirements including, Networth and ownership structure.

Mr. Ahlawat holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Rural Management from IRMA and has been a rank-holder in his class. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst from Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India, Hyderabad. To add to his credentials, he is also a certified Six Sigma Greenbelt holder.

Sanjay Awasthi
Director
Eastspring Investment

Sanjay Awasthi is a Director at Eastspring Investments (Singapore) Limited (formerly Prudential Asset Management). Sanjay has over 16 years of experience in the Securities Market and is actively trading equity and derivatives in India and other markets in the region.

Bhavdeep Bhatt
Head Portfolio Management Services
Birla Sun Life PMS

Bhavdeep has over 16 years of experience. He joined BSLAMC in March 2008 as Head – Products and headed the product development function from 2008 to 2011.

Prior to joining BSLAMC, he worked with ICICI Prudential AMC Ltd as Head – New Product Development and Communications. He joined Kotak Mahindra MF as executive in 2001 as a head for South Gujarat region and moved on to become Vice President – Marketing (Products and Communication) in 2006. Prior to 2001, when he worked with Kiran Motors Ltd., he set up car finance cells at major branches and headed sales and marketing for South Gujarat.

In his career so far, he has handled various roles in terms of setting up branches to successfully heading regional sales to spearheading various innovations in products and services. He has developed several first of their kind products in India - Multi-Manager FOF; various structured products based on strategies like CPPI, OBPI, DPI, delta hedging; Insurance-linked MF product and Capital Guaranteed Gold products. On the service innovations front too, he has led initiatives like developing On-line Return Calculator, Simulated on-line 'AMFI Test' and SMS based services in the Funds industry. He also contributed in identifying emerging themes ahead of the market and launched products around them, like 'Global India theme' in 2003 and 'Lifestyle theme' in 2005.

He has completed his MBA in Finance from Bhavnagar University in 1996.

Ofir Gefen
Managing Director
ITG Asia Pacific

Ofir Gefen is the Managing Director of ITG Asia Pacific. In this role he manages ITG's world-leading pre- and post- trade analytics products including ITG TCA and Logic, and oversees client consultation around strategic trading techniques. Mr. Gefen is also responsible for ITG Asia Pacific algorithmic and liquidity sourcing products. Mr. Gefen has worked at ITG for over 10 years and in this time has developed experience across the regions through roles in product development and execution services in Europe, the US and now Asia Pacific. Prior to joining ITG he worked at Intel for a number of years. He holds a BSc in Information Systems Engineering and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Kumar Goradia
Head of Equity Technology
Citigroup Global Markets India

Kumar Goradia manages the equity, listed derivatives, and operations technology initiatives of Citigroup Global Markets in India. Prior to Citigroup, he looked after application technology, algorithmic trading, quantitative studies, and India access products for the Institutional business of MF Global India. He has also managed treasury technology at ICICI Bank, and brokerage industry software services at Mphasis Ltd.

Additionally, Kumar spent 10 years with a private Indian brokerage, where he looked after all aspects of the equity business including arbitrage trading, B2B franchise solutions, clearing, risk management, compliance, back office, & sales. He also served on the BSE’s technology committee during that period.

Kumar has a B.E. from the University of Bombay, and an M.S. from Virginia Tech in the United States.

Akalp Gupta
Chief Manager – Investments
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance

Akalp is an engineer with a PGDM from IIM Kozhikode. He has 9 years of experience as an equity analyst and trader. Prior to ICICI Prudential, he has worked with both Indian and foreign financial institutions.

   Paresh Hede
   Head of Enterprise Solutions
   Thomson Reuters

 

Anant Jatia
Director
Forefront Capital Management Pvt. Ltd.

Anant is a Co-Founder and Director of Forefront Capital Management, a leading quantitative investment manager in India managing discretionary and advisory mandates for institutions and high net worth individuals.

Prior to co-founding Forefront Capital Management, Anant was a portfolio manager at AQR Capital Management, a twenty billion dollar quantitative asset management firm in Greenwich (Connecticut), USA. As a member of the Global Stock Selection team, Anant researched and built systematic stock selection and sector selection models for developed and emerging equity markets. He created and successfully traded new global strategies based on stock loan and short interest information, as well as dividend signaling strategies in Europe. He also managed and traded multi-billion dollar long-short, relaxed constraints, and long-only equity portfolios across developed and emerging markets.

Anant graduated cum laude from the Management and Technology Program at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) with a B.S. in Economics (Finance, Management) and a B.S.E in Computer Engineering.

Viresh Joshi
Chief Trader - Equity
Axis Asset Management

Chief Trader - Equity.
MBA - Finance, Commerce Graduate.
Work Profile: Dealing in Equity, Derivatives and ETF, using trading system Bloomberg POMS. All trades route to the broker through Bloomberg EMSX.

Shagoofa Rashid Khan
Head-Legal
Kotak Alternate Assets Group, Kotak Investment Advisors Limited

Ms. Khan has over 12 years of experience in the fields of international taxation, legal advisory services, corporate and commercial law, business advisory services, audit and finance. Ms. Khan joined Kotak in June 2006. Prior to joining Kotak, Ms. Khan worked with Nishith Desai Associates, a leading Indian law firm specializing in legal and tax counseling worldwide, as the head of the Real Estate Fund practice team and the International Tax Policy practice team. Ms. Khan's expertise lies in structuring of inbound and outbound investments, with special focus on international taxation and planning. Her passion for tax policy issues led her to working with the Chinese Taxation Ministry on a World Bank sponsored study on post-World Trade Organization tax reforms in China.

Ms. Khan is a law graduate from Mumbai University and is a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. She has also completed the company secretary program from the Institute of Company Secretaries of India.

George Kledaras
Chairman
FIX Flyer

George Kledaras is the founder and Chairman of FIX Flyer, a leading global provider of electronic trading software. Kledaras founded FIX Flyer in 2006 to re-invent electronic trading software. In addition to FIX software, he created new technology for DMA in emerging markets, real time trade reporting, and commission management and monitoring. FIX Flyer has offices in New York, Boston and Hyderabad with over 150 clients globally and counts some of the world’s greatest financial and technology institutions as partners. George is also well known as the founder of Javelin Technologies Inc in 1996. Javelin is recognized as the first high-speed FIX messaging engine. Javelin was sold in 2002 to NYFIX and now part of NYSE Technologies and Appia is still in use around the world today. Kledaras received a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA, and an MS degree in Mathematics from the Courant Institute at New York University. He is frequent lecturer on entrepreneurship and helped Lehigh start their innovative Masters Degree in Analytical Finance program. He also served the Board of Trustees and as Chairman of the PC Rossin College of Engineering Advisory Council, both at Lehigh University.

Hanno Klein
FPL Global Technical Committee Co-Chair and
Senior Vice President, Deutsche Börse Group

Hanno Klein is Senior Vice President at Deutsche Börse Group which also provides the technology for Eurex, its main derivatives exchange. He joined the company in 1997 and worked in various positions and projects of strategic and operational nature in Germany and the USA. From 2001 to 2005, he served as Vice President of Deutsche Boerse Systems Inc. in Chicago.

In June 2006, he helped to re-establish the FPL Exchanges/ECN Working Group (EEWG) which was elevated to the FPL Global Exchanges and Markets Committee (GExMC) in September 2007 and co-chaired by him since then. He is co-chair of the FPL Global Technical Committee (GTC) since July 2010 and a member of the FPL Global Steering Committee (GSC).

The GExMC seeks to enable and promote the harmonized usage of FIX by exchanges and other marketplaces. An increased adoption of FIX by this group of users requires a focus on performance together with a true standardization.

Pramod Koyothi
Vice President, Equity Sales Trading, Advanced Execution Services,
Credit Suisse Securities

Pramod has been in the industry for 13 years and is currently the Vice President at Credit Suisse Securities in India.

Suprabhat Lala
Vice President
National Stock Exchange of India

Suprabhat Lala, Vice President, heads the Trade Department at the National Stock Exchange of India (NSEIL). During his ten year tenure at the organization, he has handled various portfolios at NSE. He has extensive experience of around 21 years in the area of finance. Prior to his current posting, he has managed operations for a premier sell side brokerage house, one of the largest in the retail segment. There, he was responsible for all businesses including equities, derivatives, clearing and depository, and prime brokerage.

Greg Lee
Director, Head of Autobahn Equity Asia
Deutsche Bank

Greg Lee is Head of the Deutsche Bank Autobahn Equity trading group for the Asian region. Deutsche Bank Autobahn Equity is the Bank's Direct Market Access and Algorithmic trading platform.

Greg started his career at Tibco before moving to Reuters and UBS and has built, deployed and managed trading systems in Australia, New Zealand, United States, Switzerland, Japan, India, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Kim Man Li
Head of Product Development for Execution Services and Co-Head of Electronic Trading
Bank of America Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific

Kim Man Li is the head of product development for execution services and co-head of electronic trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific.

Kim Man has been involved in the electronic trading in Asia since 2000 and previously worked for Goldman Sachs Asia as Head of Electronic Trading Sales.

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

Hirander Misra
Managing Director
Misra Ventures

Hirander Misra is Managing Director of Misra Ventures Ltd, an independent consultancy involved in electronic trading advisory for exchanges and trading firms.

Previously, he was Chief Executive and co-founder of Algo Technologies Ltd responsible for running Algo Technologies to deliver low latency trading solutions.

Prior to holding this position, he was the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Chi-X Europe Ltd. Hirander was instrumental in taking the company from concept in November 2005 to reality resulting in a successful launch on 30th March 2007. At the time of his departure in February 2010, Chi-X Europe had grown to be the second largest exchange in Europe behind LSE Group.

Hirander began his career as a graduate at Reuters and has a BSc from the London School of Economics and an MSc with distinction in Business Systems Analysis and Design from City University London.

Anand Narayan
Senior Dealer
HSBC Global Asset Management (Singapore)

Anand Narayan (Singapore) is a Senior Dealer with HSBC Global Asset Management (Singapore) Ltd and has had industry experience since 1991. Prior to joining HSBC in 2008, Anand worked as Vice President (Sales Trading) at Credit Suisse India Pvt ltd. He holds a Master Degree in Financial Management from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (Mumbai), and Bachelors degree in Commerce from the University of Mumbai.

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 Hong Kong and Singapore.

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

Chetan Pandya
Head of IT
Kotak Securities Institutional Equities

Chetan Pandya heads Information Technology at Kotak Securities - Institutional Equities, India's leading institutional broking firm. He has over 16 years of experience in the Indian capital markets in various functions ranging from equity sales, trading, operations, projects and IT.

Over the years, Chetan has been closely associated with the changing landscape of front office and operations technologies in the Indian capital markets. He was involved in setting up the earliest private broker network in India in 2000-01 and using trading applications on them in India. Since then, he continues to be actively involved in the evolution of electronic trading in India and also evangelizes the FIX protocol amongst market players in India.

Bobby Patikh
Partner
BMR Advisors

Bobby Parikh is a tax partner with the Firm and leads its Financial Services practice. With over 25 years of experience, Bobby has advised a number of private equity investors, banking groups, investment banks, brokerage houses, fund managers and other financial services intermediaries in establishing operations in India, mergers and acquisitions, and in developing structured financial products, besides providing tax and business advisory and tax reporting services.

Bobby has led teams that have advised clients in the areas of entry strategy (MNCs into India and Indian companies into overseas markets), business model identification, structuring a business presence, mergers, acquisitions and other business reorganizations. Bobby works closely with regulators and policy formulators, in providing inputs to aid in the development of new regulations and policies, and in assessing the implications and efficacy of these and providing feedback for action.

Formerly Chief Executive Officer of Ernst & Young in India and Country Managing Partner of Arthur Andersen, Bobby has been a member of a number of trade and business associations, as well as a member of the advisory or executive boards of non-governmental and not-for-profit organizations.

Bobby is a graduate in Commerce from the University of Mumbai and also a Chartered Accountant from the Indian Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Sanjay Rawal
Chief Executive Officer
Open Futures

Sanjay Rawal is the CEO of Open Futures, one of the early entrants into High Frequency Trading in India.

Sanjay has been an entrepreneur for the last 20+ years and started going on the floor of the Delhi Stock Exchange while doing his Bachelor's from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi. He has been involved in trading for these 20+ years and has mentored many young traders.

Suchita Shah
Fund Manager / Trader
SBI Funds Management

Suchita Shah is a Senior Manager at SBI Funds Pvt. Ltd. She has over 8 years of work experience in the Equity Markets. She is currently a Fund Manager cum Equity Trader at SBIMF. She holds a Master’s Degree in Science majoring in Statistics & is a FRM holder.

Ian Smith
Head of Electronic Execution, Asia Pacific
Citi

Ian Smith is head of Electronic Execution for Citi in Asia and has been a leading driver of algorithmic execution platforms in both Asia and Europe for the last 12 years. In his current role, Ian manages a hybrid regional team of sales and coverage, quantitative analysts and technology who provide local market experience that allows Citi to offer an innovative electronic execution platform which delivers global reach with local excellence.

Ian holds a bachelors degree in Economics and a Masters in International Economics.

Balasubramaniam Venkataramani
Chief Business Officer
BSE Ltd

Mr. V. Balasubramaniam (Bala) has more than 2 decades of experience in managing business and technology operations in the capital markets and derivatives market industry. He did his Masters in Commerce from the University of Mumbai and a Rank holder from the Institute of Costs and Works Accountants of India. He is also a Certified Information Systems Auditor.

He was part of the Core team involved in setting up the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and played a key role in the setting up of NSE trading systems for the Equity segment, creation of indices (Nifty 50), introduction of Certification program and Equity Derivatives market segment of NSE. Post his tenure at NSE, he joined the Reliance Group and worked there for a decade where he was involved in numerous initiatives including handling the automation efforts for various verticals in the group. He also set up and operated the brokerage business at Basis Point Securities and Basis Point Commodities as CEO which specialized in automated trading. He also has three successful startups to his credit. As Co-founder of Marketplace Technologies, he was a key driving force in building Marketplace Technologies into one of India's leading software and IT Services Company focused on stock, commodities, currency and derivatives markets. Marketplace Technologies was acquired by the Bombay Stock Exchange in September 2009 and he joined BSE as Head - Special Initiatives reporting into the MD & CEO. As part of this responsibility, he worked as the Chief Operating Officer of United Stock Exchange a start-up exchange on the Currency Derivatives market space and successfully managed the launch of this exchange till Nov 2010. Currently, he is part of BSE's Executive Management Committee and is the Chief Business Officer responsible for the Trading, Listings, Data and Index business. He also oversees the Training business which is housed under BSE Institute Limited as a board member. He also serves in numerous committees of the BSE.