2010 Capital IQ Investor Leadership Breakfast (London)

William Browder is the Founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, a leading global asset management firm. After eleven years of investing exclusively in Russia, Mr. Browder launched Hermitage Global, a deep value public equity fund focusing on the Middle East and other emerging markets in April 2007. Mr. Browder is a leading shareholder rights activist and advocate for better corporate governance. Hermitage, through its shareholder activism, has been credited with a number of breakthroughs improving corporate governance standards at major Russian companies, including Unified Energy Systems, Sberbank and Gazprom. Mr. Browder was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2005 and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. The Financial News named him a 2005 “Person to Watch,” and Global Fund Analysis awarded him an Industry Achievement Award in 2004. He currently serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Governance and also sits as Chairman of the Russia Task Force for the Institute of International Finance. He is a member of the OECD/World Bank Roundtable on Corporate Governance in Russia.

Before founding Hermitage in 1996, he was a Vice President at Salomon Brothers, as well as a management consultant with the Eastern European practice of the Boston Consulting Group in London. He obtained a BA in Economics, with honors, from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Stanford Business School.

 

Malcolm Butler joined COMAC in March 2008 as Chief Operating Officer and Partner.  In this role, Mr. Butler heads up COMAC’s business functions including Risk, Finance, Operations, Investor Relations, Legal and Technology, covering all non-investment team activity.  Mr. Butler was at Citigroup from 1991 to 2008, starting as a Management Associate in the European Cash Management division (1991-1996).  When he left Citigroup to join COMAC, Mr. Butler was the EMEA Head of Securities and Funds Services (SFS), as Chief Operating Officer (2007-2008).  He was previously Head of Investor Services for SFS (2007), as well as Head of Global Fixed Income Trading and Cash Re-Investment for Securities Finance (2006-2007).  In addition, Mr. Butler held positions as Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer for the Global Transaction Services businesses (Cash Management, Trade and Securities Services) in London (2003-2005).  He was previously Global Chief Operating Officer for the proprietary trading business (2000-2003), working with Mr. O'Shea.  Mr. Butler had also worked with Mr. O'Shea in London when he held various trading desk and general management positions (1996-2000).  Mr. Butler holds an MSc Hons from the London Business School (2006) where he specialised in microfinance, and he has an MA Joint Hons in Politics and Modern History from Edinburgh University (1988).  Mr. Butler is currently the Treasurer and Trustee of The Butler Trust, which is a Prison Awards Charity.

 

Loïc Fery has been working in credit markets during the past 14 years, focusing on corporate credit, high-yield as well as structured credit activities. Loïc Fery founded Chenavari Investment Managers, a London-based alternative manager strictly focused on credit.

Chenavari (www.chenavari.com), with assets under management close to $1 billion, has since then established itself as one of the best performing credit hedge-fund managers and is advising many European institutional investors on restructuring opportunities.

Prior to setting up Chenavari, Loïc Fery was Managing Director, Global Head of Credit Markets & CDOs for CALYON, the investment bank of the Credit Agricole group. He was responsible globally for Credit, Structured Credit & High Yield products at the bank, including Trading, Structuring and Sales. He joined Calyon in 2001; within 6 years, he contributed to position the bank in the leading credit houses (the bank received several awards under his leadership, including Credit House of the Year in 2007 and CDO Arranger of the Year in both 2005 and 2006). In 2006, he was appointed Global Head of Credit Markets & CDO, integrating flow credit & high yield trading activities with the structured credit.

Loïc, who graduated from HEC in Paris, started to work in the credit derivatives industry in 1996. He started his career in Asia, where he was based from 1997 to 2001 and where he ran Asian Credit Derivatives desk for Credit Agricole Indosuez and Société Générale.

He also contributed to start several asset-management firms, including high-yield and structured credit asset-managers, as well as some credit derivatives product companies (CDPC). He co-authored several books on credit derivatives, structured credit and securitisation topics, focusing on the convergence of credit markets activities and funds/private equity activities. He is a frequent lecturer on credit derivatives at industry conference and business schools such as HEC, the leading French business school, where he has been teaching “Securitisation & Structured Credit” courses in the Finance Department since 2003.

 

Charles is the Chief Investment Officer of RAB Capital plc. Prior to joining RAB Capital he was a partner of Greyshrike Capital, an independent hedge fund management company which he cofounded in 2006. Before starting in the alternative asset industry Charles worked for 15 years at Credit Suisse, holding a number of senior positions in London, including Head of European Equity Capital Markets and Chairman of Corporate Broking. Earlier in his career he worked in the Corporate Finance department at Kleinwort Benson in both London and New York. He started his career at JP Morgan.

 

Cédric Kohler launched his professional career in 1994 at UBS in Zurich in risk management and then joined UBS in New York to trade forex derivatives. In 1999, he moved to Merrill Lynch to head up the Americas Equities risk management unit and then as the Managing Director of their Margin & Risk Prime Brokerage unit. In 2004, he joined Citadel Investment Group in Chicago as Head of Portfolio Construction. Mr. Kohler then joined Lombard Odier in 2007 and is now responsible for their Hedge Fund Advisory team.

Cédric holds a degree in business management from HEC Lausanne and a Master’s degree in Finance and Economics from Warwick (UK).

 

Martin Steward began his career in finance and investment journalism in 2003, reporting on the European hedge fund industry for MARHedge magazine. In December 2005 he became Editor at MandateWire, a small venture, recently acquired by the Financial Times Group, dedicated to tracking the investment activity of European pension funds and endowments for the asset management industry, where he was responsible for developing the data-gathering process and building the research team. In March 2007 he joined the Financial Times, writing news and features for the group’s institutional investment magazine, FTMandate, and for FTfm. He moved into the newly-created role of Investments Editor at Investment & Pensions Europe (IPE) magazine in February 2009. Martin holds a PhD in Drama and the Politics of Professionalism in England 1600-1640, from University College London.

 

Mick Swift is the Director of Research at Abbey Capital.  With over twenty years experience as a trader and manager of trading teams, Mick joined Abbey Capital in May 2002 and is a member of the investment committee responsible for portfolio construction.  Appointed to the company’s board of directors in June 2003, as Director of Research Mick is responsible for the Research and Risk team.

Prior to joining Abbey Capital, Mick was a Director at Allied Irish Capital Management.  While at AICM he worked in a trading capacity and also on product research and risk management. Previously, Mick was the Head of Foreign Exchange and European Interest Rate Trading at Bank of Ireland in Dublin.  From 1994 to 1997, Mick was the Treasurer and EVP at Bank of Ireland’s New York Branch, where he ran the trading and sales operation.  He initially joined Treasury division of Bank of Ireland in 1984 where he traded Foreign Exchange and Interest Rate Markets on a proprietary basis and in 1992, became Head of Interest Rate trading at the bank.

A frequent guest speaker and presenter at conferences throughout Europe, Asia and the U.S., Mick has addressed topics such as alternative investment policy development, risk management and the managed futures industry.  Mick graduated with a Bachelor’s in Commerce from University College Galway and holds an ACMA qualification.

 

John Velis is head of Capital Markets Research for Russell Investments. Coordinating Russell’s capital markets research for the EMEA region, he conducts his own capital markets research and helps direct that of associates in Russell’s London office. John also serves as the EMEA region’s member of Russell’s investment strategy team that formulates and articulates the group’s strategic views on economics, financial markets and recommended strategic investment tilts.

Before joining Russell, John held a range of positions in both the banking and asset management industries. From 1998 through 2003 he had various roles (chief economist, asset allocation strategist, head of relative value research) at Nextra Investment Management, a large Italian asset manager. He spent time on the sell-side as global equity strategist at HSBC Bank in London, and most recently helped set up the macro strategy function ABN AMRO’s portfolio management team, which manages the entire loan book of the large Dutch bank. John served as the team’s chief economist and portfolio strategist.
John has taught a variety of course in economics, asset allocation, statistics, and finance in undergraduate and M.B.A. programs in the United States and Italy, and has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, The Universities of Bonn and Mannheim in Germany, and the University of Perugia in Italy.

John is also a member of the Research Committees of both the UK’s and Europe’s Institute for Quantitative Investment Research (INQUIRE).

B.A., Economics, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D., Economics, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University