Speakers

Raquel Pichardo-Allison

Editor
Global Pensions

Raquel Pichardo-Allison is Editor of Global Pensions magazine. She has been covering the asset management industry for various publications since 2005. She has a masters degree from Boston University.

Chris Adolph

Head of Transition Management—EMEA
Russell Investments

Chris Adolph is head of transition management for Russell Investments’ EMEA region. Based in London, Chris is responsible for the management and co-ordination of all transitions in that region. He works alongside the sales and client service team where he focuses primarily on Russell’s transition management product. Chris acts as a primary coordinator during transition events, with responsibilities that include the development of transition strategies, their efficient execution and, in conjunction with sales and client service, the development of the post transition client deliverable.

Chris joined Russell Investments in 2009. He has over 10 years’ transition management experience. He headed up the EMEA transition team at UBS in 2007, following four years as a senior transition manager at State Street.

In addition, Chris has over 20 years’ investment management experience, including over 10 years at First Quadrant L.P. where he was director of trading, overseeing mainly the asset allocation strategies and managing global equity, fixed-income, derivative, and currency trading.

Rick Boomgaardt

Managing Director, Head of EMEA Transition Management
State Street Global Markets

Rick Boomgaardt, CFA, joined State Street in September 2008. Rick has more than 13 years’ experience as a transition manager, having previously founded the transition management business at Credit Suisse. Before that, he worked with Goldman Sachs International, managing transitions for a wide range of institutional and private clients.

Rick was educated in mathematics at Queen’s University, Canada, and received an MSc from the ISMA Centre Business School at the University of Reading. He has had articles published in various periodicals including the North American Actuarial Journal. Rick is a CFA charter holder, and a member of the CFA Institute and the UK Society of Investment Professionals.

Rick Di Mascio

Chief Executive
Inalytics Limited

Rick Di Mascio is founder and Chief Executive of Inalytics, a company specialising in identifying investment skill for Asset Owners and Managers in Europe, Australia, South Africa and the US.

Prior to establishing the company, Rick held a number of senior positions over a 30 year period that included MD and CIO of the in-house Manager of the £25bn Coal Schemes, and Head of the UK unit at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Rick launched one of the early European long/short hedge funds and was an Executive Director of IMIGest, the Italian Mutual Fund Company responsibility for 20% of the Italian savings market.

For three years, during its creation and launch, Rick was Chairman of the T-Charter group - the industry body set up to improve standards of transparency within the Transition Management industry.

Graham Dixon

Director
Inalytics Limited

Graham joined Inalytics in February 2009; prior to this he was a Managing Director and Head of European Transition Services at Credit Suisse. His investment industry career includes; risk measurement at Barra International and quantitative investment management, derivatives, transition management and alternative investments at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM). He was a founder and leader of the first specialist transition management team in Europe. Graham was the instigator and driver behind the T-Charter initiative (best practice standards for transition managers).

He graduated with a Joint Honours degree in Computer Science and Economics, and was later awarded an MBA (Dist.) in Finance from the City University Business School. He is a member of the Securities Institute (MSI).

Mark Dwyer

Director
Mellon Transition Management

Mark is the Managing Director and Head of EMEA for Mellon Transition Management. He was previously a Director of Sales and Marketing in the EMEA region. Prior to this he worked at Askari Risk Management (a State Street Company) as a Managing Director, where he marketed a risk management and portfolio construction tool to institutions with a complex investment process and/or complex derivative structures. He has also worked as an Executive Director at UBS, where he sought new markets and clients for the derivatives product group and as a Director at Cater Allen Futures, where he managed the institutional derivative sales business. Mark has written many articles on Transition Management and is often quoted in journals and publications having a particular interest in risk measurement and management. Mark has 22 years investment experience. He graduated with a BSc in Mathematics, MSc in Mathematics and an MBA from City University. Mark is an FSA approved person.

Lachlan French

Managing Director, and Co-Head of the Transition Management Europe, Middle East and Asia Team, BlackRock

Mr. French's service with the firm dates back to 2008, including his years with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which merged with BlackRock in 2009. At BGI Mr. French was head of Transition Management for Europe and Asia ex-Japan. Prior to joining BGI, Mr. French was a Senior Managing Director at State Street Global Markets responsible for the firm's transition management business in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Previously, Mr. French spent 14 years with Royal & Sun Alliance Asset Management where he was Director of Derivatives and Portfolio Trading.

Mr. French earned a BA degree, with honours, in mathematics and economics from the University of Durham in 1985.

Deborah Fuhr

Managing Director, Global Head of ETF Research and Implementation Strategy
BlackRock

Deborah Fuhr is the Global Head of ETF Research and Implementation Strategy and a Managing Director at BlackRock. Under Ms Fuhr’s guidance, Blackrock’s ETF Research and Implementation Strategy team is responsible for advising clients on the implementation of asset allocation strategies using ETFs, producing reports, analysis and guidebooks on the global ETF industry.

For the past four years, the group has been ranked first for Exchange Traded Fund Research by investors in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas in a global survey conducted by ExchangeTradedFunds.com. For the past three years, Deborah has in the same survey won the award for the Greatest Overall Contribution to the development of the Global ETF industry. In 2007, 2008 and 2009, Ms Fuhr was named as one of the Top 100 women in Finance, a distinguished list of the most influential women in European Finance, by Financial News.

Ms Fuhr is on the International Advisory Committee (IAC) for the Egyptian Stock Exchange, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Indexes and Journal of Indexes Europe, the Advisory Board for The Journal of Index Investing as well as the University of Connecticut School of Business International Advisory Board.

Michael Gardner

EMEA Head of Transition Management
J.P. Morgan Worldwide Securities Services

Michael Gardner, managing director, is the global head of strategy and implementation for transition management and regional head for EMEA. Michael began his career in the mutual fund industry working for Pioneer Investments and later for Safeco Asset Management. From 2000 to 2005 he worked for Russell Investment Group in Tacoma, WA, where he was the head of Trading, Operations and Connectivity for Frank Russell Securities. He joined Bear Stearns, later J.P. Morgan, in 2005 as the Senior Managing Director of Transition Services, where he implemented a unique business model standard for Transition Management. Michael is a graduate of the University of Washington and has earned the CFA designation.

Peter Halligan

Associate – Global Investment Practice
Hewitt Associates

Peter joined Hewitt in 2007. His role is to provide a comprehensive range of support to our lead consultants on fixed income fund managers. This includes advice on investment strategy and structure, manager selections and ongoing monitoring of fund managers. Peter joined the investment practise following many years operating at all levels of the fund management, interbank and stock broking sectors with a particular emphasis on bonds, cash, foreign exchange and derivatives markets.

Peter has had direct accountability for the management of central bank reserves, company pension funds, retail investment products and insurance company funds; delivering consistent risk adjusted returns over the long term. Peter is one of the Investment Practice's fixed income specialists and, together with other members of our research department, ensures that the manager selection process is efficient and meets trustees' requirements.

Peter holds an MBA (Executive) and has completed the Investment Management Programme at the London Business School.

Martin Mannion

Director – Pensions Finance, Investments and Risk
GlaxoSmithKline and Chairman of the T-Charter

Martin is the Director of Pensions Finance and Risk for the GSK UK Pension Schemes and Secretary to the Trustee for the GSK Common Investment Fund. The UK pension schemes have combined assets of £7 billion and a total membership of 79,000. Martin is a UK Chartered Accountant and a member of the NAPF Investment Council. His role covers risk management, vendor management, trustee financial reporting, tax and regulatory compliance. Martin is actively involved in a number of industry initiatives including the NAPF working group on the revision of IAS19 and the ICAEW AAF01/06 Committee and acting as Chair of the T-Charter. He is a regular speaker at industry events on topics such as defined contribution provision and custody.

Prior to working at GSK, Martin has worked in the accountancy profession, at an in-house pensions department and at a third party administrator.

Martin has a degree in English Literature from the University of Lancaster.

Colin Morrison

Independent Consultant, Member of GIPS Executive Committee
and Chair of GIPS Investor Consultant Sub-Committee

Colin Morrison is an Independent consultant working within the asset management industry providing consulting services across a range of areas: investment risk and performance, client reporting best practises, investment process examination and re-engineering, system selection and implementation. Previously he served as Head of Performance and Risk Measurement at Standard Life Investments and Global Head of Performance at Baring Asset Management.

Mr. Morrison is a member of the GIPS Executive Committee as Chairman of the Investor Consultant Sub-Committee, he is Chairman of the Alternatives Investment Strategies Working Group and the Risk Working Group and representative for the United Kingdom to the EMEA Regional Investment Performance Sub-Committee. He is also a member of the IMA Investment Performance Working Party.

Ramon Tol

Fund Manager – Equities
Blue Sky Group

Ramon joined Blue Sky Group (which manages the pension assets of KLM) in February 2000 as quantitative analyst in the Analysis group - responsible for performance measurement and attribution and risk management. In May 2002 Ramon joined the Fund Management Group as a fund manager equities. One of his major tasks is the selection and monitoring of the external equity managers. Ramon was responsible for setting up and implementing the manager monitoring and selection process at Blue Sky Group.

Prior to joining Blue Sky Group he worked at a private bank for 2 years where his main task was equity research and producing investment proposals.

He holds a Masters Degree in Economics with a specialisation in international financial economics and investment theory. Ramon speaks quite frequently on international conferences regarding manager selection and monitoring. He is co-author of an article published in the Journal of Porfolio management (spring 2009 edition) on the performance of 130-30 strategies. He is currently working on a second paper in the field of 130-30 strategies. Furthermore he is currently involved in doing research in the area of Minimum Variance/Low volatility. Ramon is also responsible for the selection and monitoring of transition managers.

Steve Webster

Head of European Transition Management
Credit Suisse

Steve Webster joined Credit Suisse as a Director in March 2009 to head up the banks transition management business in Europe. In 2001 Steve joined JPMorgan where he designed, built and then managed the bank's transition management services in Europe. Steve then moved to ABN Amro in 2005, where he successfully delivered and managed a new transition management product which was laterally migrated to RBS. Steve has over 20 years experience of working within the stock market. He began his career working for the London Stock Exchange, where he worked for 10 years before joining Investment Technology Group in 1998, where he managed the Sales and marketing of Posit to UK clients and latterly program trading.

Andrew Williams

Principal
Mercer Sentinel®

Andrew is a Principal within Mercer's Investment Consulting business. Located in London, he is part of the Mercer Sentinel Group, which focuses on advising clients in the fields of transition operations, Plan governance and custodian reviews. His specialist area is transition manager research, which he has carried out for the past 10 years. He is also a member of Mercer's Global Transition Manager research committee. Andrew has 14 years of experience within the pensions and investment industry, starting his career with Mercer in 1996. He has a degree in Economics from Bristol University, and is a member of the UK Society of Investment Professionals.