Thank you to everyone that attended the World Forum of Central Securities Depositories this year in Prague, from 24 to 26 of May.
If you would like more information following the conclusion of the event, please contact the organisers here.
You can now watch the WFC23 event replays below or by visiting the ECSDA YouTube page
Photos captured at the event can be found here.
We look forward to welcoming you back to another insightful conference in Kazakhstan in 2025!
Facilitating cross-border investment flows
FMI DLT pilots: lessons learned and challenges ahead
Settlement efficiency
Vision for the Global Post-trade
Systemic risk in Post-trade
The Honorable Caroline D. Pham, Commissioner, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
The Honorable Caroline D. Pham was sworn in as a CFTC Commissioner on April 14, 2022. Commissioner Pham is a recognized leader in financial services compliance and regulatory strategy and policy. Her substantial experience spans key international issues such as prudential regulation and systemic risk, financial markets, fintech and digital assets, ESG, implementation of global regulatory reforms, and addressing the impact of major disruptions like the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Commissioner Pham is the sponsor of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee.
Previously, Commissioner Pham was a Managing Director at Citigroup where she held various senior roles, including Head of Market Structure for Strategic Initiatives on the Institutional Clients Group Business Development team; Head of Capital Markets Regulatory Strategy and Engagement; Deputy Head of Global Regulatory Affairs; and Global Head of Swap Dealer and Volcker Compliance. She was a member of firmwide governance forums and has held leadership roles in many industry organizations.
Commissioner Pham is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and has received various professional awards. She has a B.A. from UCLA and a J.D. from the George Washington University Law School, where she has served on the Dean’s Advisory Council for Business and Finance Law and was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Law, Economics and Finance.
Samuel Riley is the Chief Executive Officer of Clearstream Holding AG and Head of Clearstream Securities Services. Previously, he had a long-standing career at Citigroup, where he most recently served as Global Head of Custody Operations. His earlier responsibilities there included leading the EMEA Service Centers & Shared Services organisation and being an Executive Board Member of Citigroup Global Markets Deutschland AG. Samuel Riley holds a degree in Business Management from Wolverhampton University.
Javier Hernani took up his role of Head of the Securities Services business unit and he is member of the Executive Board of Six Group, since January 2021, after the takeover of BME by SIX. He is also CEO of Bolsas y Mercados Españoles, Sociedad Holding de Mercados y Sistemas Financieros, SA, since April 2017. He served as General Manager of BME from December 2012 to April 2017, with the specific role of coordinating the action of business units and corporate areas. Chairman of the Risk and Security Committees as well as Member of the board of several subsidiaries. Previously, he joined BME as Chief Financial Officer and member of the Executive Committee, assuming the role of conducting the integration process of the newly created group and leading the IPO process which took the company public as of 14th July 2006.
Prior to its incorporation to Bolsas y Mercados Españoles, Mr. Hernani was Deputy General Manager of the Bilbao Stock Exchange (until 2003), CFO of Norbolsa, S.V.B. (until 1998) and Consultant in Coopers & Lybrand Brussels (until 1989).
Mr. Hernani earned a Degree in Economics and Business by University of Deusto in 1986, a Master’s Degree in European Economic Studies, specialising in Economics, by The College of Europe in Brussels in 1988 and a Master’s Degree in Advanced Management by University of Deusto in 1997.
Guillaume Eliet has been Chief Executive Officer of Euroclear ESES CSDs (Euroclear France, Euroclear Belgium and Euroclear Nederland) since 01 September 2021.
Mr. Eliet was head of Regulatory, Compliance and Public Affairs, for Euroclear group Since 2017.
Prior to joining Euroclear, he worked at the French Stock Market Authority, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), where he was the Deputy General Secretary, heading the Regulation Policy and International Affairs division. Guillaume had previously been head of the Asset Management division within the AMF in Paris.
A lawyer by profession, Mr. Eliet graduated with a postgraduate Diploma in Business Law and Taxation, as well as a Master’s Degree in Business Law at Sorbonne University.
You can also download a PDF version of the agenda here
Mark Gem has been with Clearstream for over 20 years and a board member since 2007, focusing on network management, primary markets activity and compliance. He was responsible for Clearstream’s T2S strategy. He currently chairs Clearstream’s Risk Committee, amongst many other things overseeing the post-Brexit organisation of Clearstream’s UK business and Clearstream’s overall response to the COVID-19 crisis. He represents Luxembourg on the boards of SWIFT and sits on the board of Regis-TR, the Luxembourg-based trade repository. He has been on the board of ECSDA since 2002 and served as Vice-Chairman under Joël Mérère until 2013. In May 2021, Mark was elected ECSDA Chair.
Mark has a first class degree from Oxford University in Modern History.
Paul Symons is Group Chief of Staff for Euroclear SA/NV, providing advice and support to the Euroclear SA/NV Chief Executive and the Euroclear SA/NV Management Committee. He was appointed to this role on 1 September 2020.
In addition, Mr Symons was appointed Chief Sustainability Officer for the Euroclear Group in September 2021.
He also sits on the Board of Euroclear UK & International (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Euroclear SA/NV) as a Non-Executive Director.
From 2018-2020, Mr Symons was the Head of the Euroclear SA/NV Corporate Secretariat Division and Secretary to the Euroclear SA/NV Board of Directors.
From 2002 – 2018, Mr Symons was Group Head of Government Relations at Euroclear ,responsible for managing Euroclear’s relationships with those stakeholders who influenced the regulatory and political context in which Euroclear operated.
He has been a board member of the European Central Securities Depositories Association (ECSDA) and chaired the Association’s Policy Group until March 2018.
He has also been a member of the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) Post-Trade Consultative Group, and a variety of other European post-trade Committees.
Mr Symons joined Euroclear in 2002, following the merger with CRESTCo (now Euroclear UK &International), the central securities depository for UK securities.
Previously, Mr Symons spent seven years at the Bank of England in a variety of roles, including a period working as the Private Secretary to the Executive Director of the Banking Supervision and Banking Departments.
Francisco Béjar Núñez is Head of the CSD Services of SIX BME group.
Mr. Béjar has 30 years of experience in post-trading, mainly in areas such as Settlement and Custody, Cash and Treasury and Corporate Trust, from a double point of view, as custodian and as market infrastructure. He is member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of ECSDA (European Central Securities Depository Association), and member of various market committees and expert groups at national and international level, such as the Clearing, Settlement and Registration Experts Group chaired by the CNMV (Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores), the Post-Trading Standing Committee´s consultative Working Group of ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority), the Harmonisation Steering Group chaired by the ECB (European Central Bank)
Olga Cantillo is the Executive Vice President and CEO of Latin American Stock Exchange (Latinex). She has over 30 years of professional experience in the financial services industry.
Ms. Cantillo is currently also President of the Ibero-American Federation of Stock Exchanges (FIAB), Director of the Central Securities Depository Association of the Americas (ACSDA), Secretary of the Association of Capital Markets of the Americas (AMERCA), Member of the Independent Advisory Committee of the UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative (SSE), Independent Director of BI-Bank Panama, and Director of Fundación Calicanto.
Prior to joining Armenia Securities Exchange (AMX) in 2017, Hayk Yeganyan spent 4 years at the Central Bank of Armenia as the advisor to the Governor covering areas related to capital markets development, accumulative pension savings industry and being in charge of attracting foreign financial institutions into Armenia, covering both business development and relationship management aspects. During his tenure, he also served as member of the Supervisory Board of NASDAQ OMX Armenia for 1 year.
Before joining the Central Bank of Armenia, he spent several years in London working within the private banking industry covering Russia and CIS region, and parallel to that also acting as the representative of the Armenian Development Agency in the UK. Hayk Yeganyan is a member of the Supervisory Board of Central Depository of Armenia, OJSC.
He started his career at Gazprom Armenia in 2006, where from 2007 to 2010 he served as head of securities market operations department, acting as company’s pre-IPO internal lead manager. During that period together with his team, he successfully organised the first two public bond issuances in Armenia in 2007 and 2008. He holds a B.A. in Financial Economics from University of Leicester (UK), and MSc in Management from Imperial College London.
Mr. Alao is the Chief Operating Officer of FMDQ Depository Limited, a subsidiary of FMDQ Group PLC. Emmanuel’s work experience of over twenty-nine (29) years spans Technology, Project Management, and Consulting functions in various organisations including Citibank Nigeria, FCMB Limited, London International Financial Futures & Options Exchange, JPMorgan Chase, Santander UK, KPMG UK, and Air Peace Nigeria Limited. Prior to joining FMDQ, Mr. Alao was the Chief Information Officer at Air Peace Nigeria Limited.
Jenny Hancock is an economist who has specialised in policy development and supervision of financial market infrastructures. She is currently on secondment from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) as a member of Secretariat at the BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI). At the CPMI she has been supporting the joint work with the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) on policy development and implementation of the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures. This has included work on business continuity planning, stablecoins, wholesale digital tokens, FX settlement risk, CCP resilience, recovery and resolution, non-default losses and margin.
Prior to joining CPMI, Jenny held management roles in the department at the RBA responsible for oversight, supervision and policy development for CCPs, CSDs/SSSs and systemically important payment systems. She holds a Masters of Economics from the University of New South Wales and has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst programme. She has written on various issues related to financial market infrastructures and retail payment systems, including a BIS Quarterly Review article On the future of securities settlement.
Financing, facilitation of links, and removing other hurdles
Mark Gem has been with Clearstream for over 20 years and a board member since 2007, focusing on network management, primary markets activity and compliance. He was responsible for Clearstream’s T2S strategy. He currently chairs Clearstream’s Risk Committee, amongst many other things overseeing the post-Brexit organisation of Clearstream’s UK business and Clearstream’s overall response to the COVID-19 crisis. He represents Luxembourg on the boards of SWIFT and sits on the board of Regis-TR, the Luxembourg-based trade repository. He has been on the board of ECSDA since 2002 and served as Vice-Chairman under Joël Mérère until 2013. In May 2021, Mark was elected ECSDA Chair.
Mark has a first class degree from Oxford University in Modern History.
Vojtěch Belling has been Executive Director of the Department of Financial Regulation and International Cooperation in the Czech National Bank, the integrated authority for financial market supervision in the Czech Republic, since 2018. Before that, he served as Director of the EU and International Affairs Division in the Czech National Bank (2014-2018), as State Secretary for EU Affairs (2011-2014), and held various positions in the Czech Civil Service since 2002.
Mr Belling is a member of the Board of Supervisors of ESMA, a member of the International Relations Committee of the European Central Bank and an alternate member of the Economic and Financial Committee of the EU. He was also a member of the Management Board of ESMA until September 2022.Mr Belling is active in the academic sphere, lectures law and political science at Charles University in Prague and Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí and Labem. In the past, he was also a lecturer at the University of Heidelberg. He holds a Master’s degree in Law from Charles University in Prague, a PhD degree in Political Science from Charles University in Prague, and Associate Professor degree from Masaryk University in Brno. He published several academic books and many articles, including in the European Law Journal, the International Organizations Law Review and the Zeitschrift für Öffentliches Recht.
Jim Turnbull joined EBRD in 2011 and is the deputy director and head of product for the Capital and Financial Markets Development Department (CFMD). He has over 30 years’ experience in investment banking, pensions investment and funds management having managed both debt and equity portfolios. He has also managed foreign exchange, derivatives and treasury exposures in both emerging and developed markets. As MD of Triarii Advisors, Jim acted as an independent advisor to several asset managers and hedge funds specializing in emerging market investment.
Jim led the project team that created and developed the highly successful AsianBondsOnline fixed income portal for the Asian Development Bank in 2003. He has significant “in-country” expertise as team leader for a large number of capital markets technical assistance projects for several international financial institutions including the implementation of the capital markets development master plan in Thailand, as well as other development assignments in the Philippines, Viet Nam, and Serbia. Between 2015-2020 he was an independent board member for the CSD, Depozitarul Central in Romania.
Jim has written extensively on the technical aspects of local capital market development in emerging markets and financial stability and has a B.Com from University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Indars Ascuks is the CEO of Nasdaq CSD and the Deputy Chairman of ECSDA. Indars has over 20 years’ experience working in financial markets and has been responsible for implementing Nasdaq’s strategic initiatives in the Baltics and Nordic.
Indars has been leading the merger of the four CSDs in Baltic and Iceland into a single Nasdaq CSD and has led the integration process of stock exchanges in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania into the international groups of exchanges, including OMX and Nasdaq.
Indars is actively working in NGOs, such as Baltic Institute of Corporate Governance, as well as was the chair of Latvian Securities Market Association. He has been chairing multiple Boards, including Pensionikeskus in Estonia, Nasdaq OMX Armenia and Emerging Nordic Research.
Abdulla Abdin has Masters in Business Administration from the University of Glamorgan UK, and currently holds the position of Chief Operating Officer– Bahrain Clear. He is the Chairman of the Guarantee Fund Committee and Chairman of the African Middle East Depositories Association (AMEDA). Mr. Abdin has over 31 years of experience in Banking and Capital Market structure, regulations and operations.
Centralized Multi-Entity CSD Solution for an entire Capital Market – Case Study Georgia
Giorgi has been working for National Bank of Georgia since 2001, where he occupied various positions, including specialist at International Reserves Management Division, deputy head of Risk Management
division and head of Macroeconomics Department. Since 2006 Giorgi is heading Financial Markets Department. Giorgi’s responsibilities cover areas of Portfolio management, Risk management, International settlements, Domestic monetary operations and operation of GSSS – Georgian Securities Settlement System.
Giorgi has been actively involved in local currency money and capital market development, and has been at the forefront of many important reforms in related areas. In 2019 he has successfully led the implementation of centralized nationwide system for securities settlements, used for CSD operations and central bank collateral management. The project was undertaken jointly with domestic Stock Exchange and in cooperation with Montran. The system was based on an innovative multi-CSD concept and featured state of the art solutions for ease and efficiency of settlement process, dramatically reduced the risks and operating costs for both public and private sector.
The reform has featured as case study in IMF/WB Guidance Note for Developing Government Local Currency Bond Markets and has been awarded by Central Banking Awards as the best collateral management system.
Giorgi Laliashvili holds Master’s degree from Georgian State University in Banking and Finance and MA in Economics from Center for Development Economics, Williams College, USA.
Rares Togan has been with Montran Corporation for 22 years, performing various roles in multiple implementation projects that cover the entire range of Montran products. Coming from a technical background, Rares has gradually transitioned to the business area of the products, currently undertaking the role of Senior Business Analyst, Securities and Trading.
In this capacity, he has been involved in over 30 implementation projects for Central Securities Depositories and Trading Systems around the world, facilitating business analysis of the client capital markets environment, with the goal of producing accurate and comprehensive solution specifications materials, as well as supporting the transfer of knowledge process by delivering formal training.
Jim manages the Global Network Management (‘GNM’) division at TM and has over 26 years in the financial services industry. His responsibilities include running a team of 25 analysts and network managers who track custodian and market practice in 104 markets and assess risks in over 300 custodians, 145 CSDs and 27 CCPs worldwide. Jim is a subject matter expert on post-trade infrastructure and has led various strategic consulting projects on market infrastructure. Previously, Jim was a senior analyst within TM Network Management evaluating and selecting local and global custodians for clients as well as supporting a variety of consultancy engagements. Prior to joining TM in 1995, he was at Taylor Nelson Sofres as a Project Supervisor in their Financial division.
As the Chief Risk Officer for Euroclear Belgium, Euroclear France and Euroclear Nederland, Pierre Paul Stacanov is responsible for enabling the governance of risks and related opportunities in the three entities. With a strong background in audit and risk management, Mr Stacanov is also closely following up all relevant regulatory matters for the organisation. He is currently chairing the European Central Securities Depositories Association’s (ECSDA) Risk Management Working Group.
Before taking up his current position, he was a senior member of Euroclear Bank’s Network Management division, in charge of maintaining CSD links and managing relationships and improving services with Euroclear Bank’s network of securities and cash service providers. Prior to this, he was Chief Operating Officer of Euroclear Belgium and a member of its Management and Operational Committees. Previously, Mr Stacanov was a member of Euroclear’s Internal Audit division, heading a team responsible for auditing a number of Euroclear divisions and subsidiaries. Before this, as Product Manager for international securities, he developed Euroclear’s new issues services and closely followed the emergence of new currencies into the Eurobond market.
Mr Stacanov received degrees in Law from Ghent University, in Belgium and the European University Center in Nancy, France before joining Euroclear in 1990. He has a Master’s degree in Internal Auditing from the University Antwerp Management School (UAMS) and is a Certified Internal Auditor from the Institute of Internal Auditors.
Mr. Arıkan earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering at Boğaziçi University and his MBA at Yeditepe University. He received his PhD degree from Istanbul Ticaret University in Business Administration. He speaks advance level English and German, also beginner-level Arabic.
He started his career at Microsoft as a Support Engineer in 1998, then a Program Specialist in 1999, and a Program Manager in Windows International Product Development Group since 2000.
Mr. Arıkan joined Ziraat Teknoloji as IT Architecture Manager in 2007. He worked as a Project Management Office Manager in 2009, IT Security Manager in 2011, and was appointed as Corporate Development Director in 2013. In 2014, he worked at Ziraat Hayat ve Emeklilik A.Ş as IT and Corporate Development Group Manager responsible for Information Technologies, Customer Services and Call Center, HR and Support Services.
In 2015, he started to work at the EPİAŞ (Energy Exchange – Enerji Piyasaları İşletme A.Ş.) firstly as a Consultant to Chairman and then appointed to the role Strategy Development Director.
In 2016, he started to work in Borsa Istanbul Group at Takasbank as the Executive Vice President for Information Technology.
Since April 2019, he has been working as General Manager and Board Member at MKK which is Central Securities Depository of Türkiye.
Oleksii Yudin joined National Depository of Ukraine (NDU) as a Chairman of the Board in June 2021. His main objectives in the role are digitalization, risk management and strategy execution.
Prior to NDU Oleksii was employed by UBS Investment Bank in London where he was taking leading role in Global IT and was responsible Equity Swaps platform development.
15+ years of Oleksii’s professional experience is an amalgam of software development, project management and investment banking focused on the post-trade accounting systems.
Oleksii graduated from Faculty of Electronics at National Technical University of Ukraine with a Master degree in Electronics.
Pheona Härtel is Head of Risk, Legal and Compliance. She is experienced in overseeing risk disciplines and has worked for several blue-chip financial organisations in South Africa and internationally, where, among other things, she has led operational process re-engineering; implemented, and expanded upon, compliance and governance principles; and provided strategic risk inputs to CEOs and executives with focus on building and maintaining an “anti-fragile” organisation grounded in resilience and supported by risk management methodologies that are innovative, dynamic and forward thinking.
She holds a LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Pretoria.. She is experienced in overseeing risk disciplines and has worked for several blue-chip financial organisations in South Africa and internationally, where, among other things, she has led operational process re-engineering; implemented, and expanded upon, compliance and governance principles; and provided strategic risk inputs to CEOs and executives with focus on building and maintaining an “anti-fragile” organisation grounded in resilience and supported by risk management methodologies that are innovative, dynamic and forward thinking.
She holds a LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Pretoria.
Adrien Vanderlinden leads the Systemic Risk Office of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which is tasked with identifying, addressing and mitigating systemic threats to DTCC, its clients and the financial industry at
large. He heads DTCC’s interconnectedness risk program and is involved in several other initiatives that are designed to strengthen the resilience of DTCC’s Systemically Important Financial Market Utilities. He is also responsible for developing white papers and other educational materials on systemic risk issues.
Prior to joining DTCC, Adrien held a variety of positions at Euroclear, where he worked closely with global fixed income market participants on tri-party repo services and collateral management solutions.
A Belgian native, Adrien holds a master’s degree in economics from
the University of Leuven (KU Leuven).
The Honorable Caroline D. Pham was sworn in as a CFTC Commissioner on April 14, 2022. Commissioner Pham is a recognized leader in financial services compliance and regulatory strategy and policy. Her substantial experience spans key international issues such as prudential regulation and systemic risk, financial markets, fintech and digital assets, ESG, implementation of global regulatory reforms, and addressing the impact of major disruptions like the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Commissioner Pham is the sponsor of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee.
Previously, Commissioner Pham was a Managing Director at Citigroup where she held various senior roles, including Head of Market Structure for Strategic Initiatives on the Institutional Clients Group Business Development team; Head of Capital Markets Regulatory Strategy and Engagement; Deputy Head of Global Regulatory Affairs; and Global Head of Swap Dealer and Volcker Compliance. She was a member of firmwide governance forums and has held leadership roles in many industry organizations.
Commissioner Pham is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and has received various professional awards. She has a B.A. from UCLA and a J.D. from the George Washington University Law School, where she has served on the Dean’s Advisory Council for Business and Finance Law and was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Law, Economics and Finance.
Market Architecture: from a technical perspective, both DLT and centralised IT technologies do not prevent to collapse the infrastructure roles, was the regulation right in separating the role or is there a difference in DLT that justify such a collapse now?
Business case: is the technology too expensive for all actors to co-sign to use it? Will it lead to more fragmentation?
Interoperability: what do we learn from the first cross-chain repo swap (between HQLAx and Fnality) with different DLT technologies? How do smart contracts further enable automation, e.g. for corporate actions?
Alexandre Kech joined SDX in November 2022 as Head Digital Securities. Over the past 25 years, Alex has constructed a unique career combining finance at BNY Mellon, payments/securities infrastructure and standards at SWIFT, and blockchain and digital assets at Onchain Custodian (ONC). As co-founder and CEO of ONC, Alex led the Singapore and Shanghai-based team that built from scratch a custody and prime brokerage service for crypto and other digital assets. Most recently, he moved to Switzerland to launch and run Citi Ventures’ Blockchain & Digital Asset team to engage across the European ecosystem on emerging use cases for blockchain technologies and digital currencies.
Glen Fernandes is the Head of Digital Business Design for the Euroclear Group. He is responsible for helping shape the transition of Euroclear’s business into a future model driven by digital and data.
Mr Fernandes has previously held senior roles in the Euroclear’s Strategy and Product Division where he was responsible for heading the Fixed Income Primary markets business and leading strategic business development and fintech investment opportunities, to help shape Euroclear’s overall strategic and innovation direction.
Mr Fernandes also co-founded and chairs an industry working group of Central Securities Depositories (CSDs), Custodian banks & Fintechs under the International Securities Services Association (ISSA) to help create a common market understanding for the adoption of Digital Assets and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) in capital markets.
Mr Fernandes has over 19 years of experience in capital markets and financial technology across America, Europe and Asia Pacific. He joined Euroclear in 2014 having earlier worked for securities services business lines at JP Morgan, Nomura, and Lehman Brothers where his work spanned key product/service launches and technology development.
Mr Fernandes holds a Masters in Business Administration from Vlerick Business School Belgium, in addition to Bachelors studies in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering.
Martin Watkins is the Chief Executive of Montis Group where he is building digital CSDs and applying for regulatory approval to settle natively digital and non-native digital securities tokens using innovative blockchain technology, alongside conventional equity and debt. Montis Group was founded and is majority-owned by Archax, the first ever FCA regulated digital securities exchange that also has FCA brokerage, custody, and crypto-asset permissions.
Prior to Montis, Martin was at Ernst & Young (EY) for 7 years where, as EMEIA Lead for Exchanges and FMIs, he worked on multiple blockchain initiatives with fnality, Paxos, Euroclear, R3, DTCC, STRATE, Euronext, The Royal Mint/CME and TMX.
Before EY, Martin was a member of senior management at Euroclear (CRESTCo) in London and was elected Chairman of the Euroclear Group Operations Task Force focused on harmonising and restructuring services. This followed several years in Paris as an Executive member of AtosEuronext, running all LCH.Clearnet SA IT services across Europe, clearing €1.7 Trillion of equity, fixed income, and derivative transactions per day.
Martin is a former Board member and Trustee of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI), where he was Founding Chairman of the International Regulations Forum and Chairman of the FinTech Forum. He is responsible for the Archax group relationship and participation in the International Securities Services Association (ISSA).
Martin is a Chartered Honorary Fellow of CISI, a Fellow of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors. He sits on the Court of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers and is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.
Jennifer Peve is Managing Director, Head of Strategy and Business Development at DTCC. In this role, Jennifer has overarching responsibility for the firm’s global corporate strategy, digital product development and strategic partnerships and alliances, working across the business, and with clients and third-party providers, to identify opportunities for new product development as well as potential acquisitions, partnerships and mergers to broaden DTCC’s capabilities. She is also responsible for defining the firm’s strategy for new and emerging technology innovation, leading efforts related to the exploration and experimentation of fintech, and working with her colleagues and the industry to advance dialogue on key topics and develop thought leadership. Jennifer is also a member of the firm’s Management Committee.
Jennifer joined DTCC in 2015. Prior to that, she worked at CME Group where she served as Executive Director of OTC Product Management with responsibility for CME’s cleared OTC credit default swaps (CDS) business, including growth strategy, business development, and go-to-market activities.
Jennifer has over 25 years of financial markets expertise, including consulting and practical experience as well as the design, development and deployment of business strategies in a dynamic environment. She has extensive knowledge across the entire product life cycle, including OTC, FX and FX Options, OTC Metals, Stock Lending, OTC Credit Default Swaps, OTC Interest Rate Swaps and Swaptions, OTC Total Return Swaps, F&O, Energy and Equities.
Jennifer currently serves on the Technology Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as well as FINRA’s FinTech Industry Committee and is the former Chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA)’s Banking Working Group. She is a member of SIFMA’s Blockchain Roundtable and is a regular speaker at industry conferences.
Ondrej Dusilek is a Chief Executive Officer of the CSD Prague He started his professional career in 2005 as an analyst at UNIVYC, a.s., which was a subsidiary of the Prague Stock Exchange, which in 2010 was renamed to Centrální depozitář cenných papíru, a.s. (CSD Prague) and took over securities registration from the Securities Center owned by the Ministry of Finance. In 2012, he completed a City of London Corporation internship, which included a two-month work experience at the London Stock Exchange in the Regulatory Strategy Department. He also participated in 2013 and 2014 as an advisor to a World Bank project to modernize the capital market in Azerbaijan. In 2017, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the CSD Prague and two years later was appointed as the CEO of the CSD Prague and was also elected to the Exchange Chamber (Board of Directors) of the Prague Stock Exchange.
He graduated from the Faculty of Economics at VSB-TU Ostrava with a degree in Finance (2003) and a degree in Euro government (2005). In 2016 he completed the Diploma for graduates in Banking at the University of London.
Nathan is the Deputy Head of the Capital Markets Supervision function at the Malta Financial Services Authority (‘MFSA’). He had joined the MFSA in 2010 where he has been primarily involved in any policy and supervisory work in relation to Secondary Markets and Post-Trading market infrastructures. Nathan also Chairs the DLT Working Group at the European Securities and Markets Authority (‘ESMA’). Additionally, at ESMA level Nathan is an active member of various Committees and Working Groups such as the Markets Standing Committee, the Post-Trading Working Group, the Senior Supervisory Forum, and also holds a College seat at the Third Country CCP Supervisory College. In the past, Nathan co-chaired on the EMIR REFIT and EMIR 2.2 dossiers during the Maltese Presidency at the Council of the EU, but has also actively followed discussions on the DLT Pilot Regime, CSDR Refit package, MiFIR Review and EMIR Refit (2023) as the expert for Malta at working party stages. Nathan is also a part-time visiting lecturer at the University of Malta and holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours Degree) in Banking and Finance (Melit.) and a Scientific Masters in Finance (Leic.).
How do the two worlds of DLT native and traditional book-entry securities work together?
What is the difference between securitisation and tokenisation of assets?
Can tokenisation and servicing of tokenised assets by a Settlement System Infrastructure inject liquidity and trust in the new market segments?
“Same activities, same risk, same rules” – is it so true?
Now that we have seen some failures, e.g. FTX, what regulation should apply to DLT Settlement Systems and their operators?
Barnaby has worked for over 15 years in the post-trade capital markets space: leading transforming custody and cash businesses to the point of market leadership. Until 2018, he led Standard Chartered Bank’s custody business in Asia and prior to that he launched BNP Paribas’ custody business in Asia.
Throughout Barnaby’s career, he has focused on market structure and connectivity as a key theme. Having helped to launch clearing and back office outsourcing solutions in Asia-Pacific, he has since worked with regulators, global exchanges, clearing houses, brokers and investors to ensure that new technologies (such as DLT, AI and others) can be smoothly deployed as players reach for ever improving levels of efficiency.
This connectivity continues at #theValueExchange, where Barnaby’s attention is now focused on delivering actionable, statistical insights on key market dynamics. Leveraging unique benchmarking and insight technologies, Barnaby is now helping market participants to make the right decisions and giving sales organizations the data and tools they need to maximize their revenues in changing times.
Jens Hachmeister, Managing Director at Clearstream Holding AG is Head of New Digital Markets, Data & Issuer Solutions and a member of the Clearstream Management Board. After completing a banking apprenticeship and a degree in business administration, he began his career as a management consultant at KPMG before joining Xetra Market Development at Deutsche Börse AG in June 2000. Jens was Head of Operations and Infrastructure Development and part of the Management Committee Xetra until January 2009. From mid-April 2010 to December 2015, he was the Chief HR Officer of Deutsche Börse AG and in mid-August 2015, he assumed the newly created role of Chief of Staff and Head of Strategic Execution to the Group’s CEO. In April 2018, Jens created the New Digital Markets Area as one of the key pillars of Deutsche Börse’s DLT and blockchain strategy before taking on additional responsibility as Clearstream’s Head of Issuer Services in February 2020 and Data & Connectivity as of October 2022. In his current role he is driving the digitization of the company, its markets solutions, products and services.
Vipin Y.S Mahabirsingh holds a B.Tech (First Class, Hons.) degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Mauritius, an M.Phil in Microelectronic Engineering and Semiconductor Physics from the University of Cambridge and an MBA (with distinction) from Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University. He joined the Central Depository & Settlement Co. Ltd at its inception in 1996 as Systems Manager and was appointed General Manager in July 1997.
He was then appointed as Managing Director in November 2005. In his capacity as Managing Director of CDS, he also provides consultancy services to African stock exchanges and central depositories. He was the systems vendor’s Project Director in the implementation of trading and depository systems at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (2004/2006), Bank of Ghana (2004), Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (2006), Botswana Stock Exchange (2008/2012), Lusaka Stock Exchange (2008) and Bolsa de Valores de Mocambique (2013). He supervised the implementation of an automated trading system at the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange in 2015 and has spearheaded the replacement of the trading and depository systems at the Lusaka Stock Exchange which went live in December 2017.
He is a member of the Technical Committee that has been set up by the African Stock Exchanges Association (ASEA) to drive the implementation of the African Exchanges Linkage Project (ALEP). He is also a member of the Ratings Committee of CARE Ratings Africa. Vipin has been appointed as member of the Product Advisory Committee (PAC) of the Digital Token Identifier Foundation (DTIF). DTIF’s mission is to provide the golden source reference data for the unique identification of digital tokens based on ISO’s new standard for digital assets, ISO 24165.
Andreas Lundell is the Head of Product for Nasdaq’s CSD technology offering at Nasdaq Market Technology, responsible for developing the long-term vision for Nasdaq’s CSD technology product portfolio, while leading a team of post-trade technology professionals in their work to ensure high-quality and efficient delivery of CSD solutions tailored for the needs of tomorrow. Andreas is based in Stockholm, Sweden and has over 20 years of experience in the post trade industry. Prior to joining Nasdaq in 2015, Andreas held various position within Euroclear Sweden
Ian is a senior Business Development executive with over 30 years of capital markets experience gained through trading, regulatory and software product-marketing roles at investment banks, exchanges and technology providers. Ian focuses on R3’s Digital Exchange and DLT initiatives
Manmohan Singh is a senior economist with the IMF. He writes extensively on topical issues including collateral velocity (a term he coined), rehypothecation of collateral, monetary policy and collateral, role of global custodians, and why some EM collateral should be part of global plumbing, and (recently) digital money, stablecoins and access to central bank reserves. His new book, Collateral Markets and Financial Plumbing, looks at all the above topics from the lens of financial collateral. Manmohan has led workshops for the IMF to official sector policy makers on the impact of regulations on financial markets. He holds a Ph.D. and M.B.A. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. from Allegheny College. His recent articles are available at https://sites.google.com/view/msinghdc/home
Holger Neuhaus is Head of the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) Market Innovation and Integration Division in the Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments. His Division develops the ECB/Eurosystem’s approach in relation to innovation and integration in the field of payments and post-trade services.
Until November 2019 he headed the Money Market and Liquidity Division which provides market analysis of euro area money markets and ensures the execution of monetary policy through the Eurosystem’s open market operations and liquidity management. It also had a lead role in developing and transitioning to a new reference interest rate for the money market.
He previously worked as Counsellor to the ECB’s Executive Board, headed the Financial Markets and Banking Statistics Section and was seconded to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as Senior Policy Advisor.
Before joining the ECB he worked for the Deutsche Bundesbank and a portfolio management company, inter alia in the field of foreign reserve management and financial market research. Holger Neuhaus studied economics at the Universities of Essen and Toronto.
Mr Piero Cipollone has been a member of the Governing Board and Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy from 1 January 2020. In this capacity, he is also a member of the joint Governing Board of the Insurance Supervisory Authority (IVASS). After graduating in Economics from ‘La Sapienza’ University of Rome, he obtained an M.A. in Economics from Stanford University. In 2001 he was visiting scholar at UC Berkeley.
In 1993 he joined the Economic Research Department of the Bank of Italy, first in the Balance of Payments Office and then as Head of the Labour Market Office. In 2007 he was appointed Special Commissioner of the Italian research institute INVALSI, and then President until 2011. From 2010 to 2014 he was the World Bank Group Executive Director for Italy, Albania, Greece, Malta, Portugal, San Marino and Timor-Leste, as well as Chairman of the Audit Committee. He returned to the Bank of Italy in 2014 and in November he was appointed Head of the Planning and Controls Directorate.
From 2017 to 2019, he was Deputy Director General of the Directorate General for Accounting and Controls, which in September 2017 became the Directorate General for Currency Circulation and Accounting. From September 2018 to September 2019 he was Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister. From 1 October 2019 to 31 December 2019 he was Managing Director responsible for high-level consultancy to the Governing Board on matters concerning the organization of the Bank’s functions and institutional relations.
Author and co-author of many articles and papers on trade, labour economics and education economics, published in a variety of academic journals, including American Economic Review and Journal of the European Economic Association, he also taught at both the Luiss University in Rome and the University of L’Aquila.
A former Banking Executive with 22+ years of experience, including most recently Global Head of Product Management for Transaction Banking at Deutsche Bank, Rhom has developed an interest in creating digital businesses for finance and finance related areas. He brings experience of working across a wide variety of wholesale banking businesses and functions including sales, trading, product management, and technology to his role at Fnality. The majority of his experience has been developing businesses where the product is at the intersection of finance and technology.
Haruna Jalo-Waziri is the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of CSCS Plc, Nigeria’s capital market infrastructure. Since his appointment in 2017, he takes full responsibility for the leadership of the institution towards diversifying the earnings and repositioning the core operations for growth and efficiency gains. Growing profit by 18% CAGR in his four years of stewardship and consistently delivering >20% return on average equity, including the pandemic year, Jalo continues to position CSCS as a leading financial market infrastructure in Africa, with focus on deepening the Nigerian market. Jalo, a member of the Advisory Board of BusinessDay Media, is a Non-Executive Director on the Boards of NG Clearing Limited and Lagos Commodities and Futures Exchange Limited. Jalo, who is a Non-Executive Director of the International Securities Services Association (ISSA), Switzerland, also represents the World Forum of Central Securities Depositories on the Operating Committee of ISSA. He is the Vice President of the Africa and Middle East Depositories Association (AMEDA) and an active member of Nigeria’s SEC-led Nigerian Capital Market Committee. Jalo, serves on the Institute’s Annual Workshop Organising Committee and plays active roles in different engagements and initiatives of the Institute. He chaired the Organising Committee of Nigeria’s Economic Summit in 2021 and continues to provide support to the Nigeria Economic Summit Group.
He was previously Executive Director, Capital Markets at The Nigerian Stock Exchange (now Nigerian Exchange Group Plc), where he led cross-functional teams responsible for the recovery of primary and secondary markets between 2012 and 2017. He co-managed a number of initiatives at the Exchange, including the launch of the Premium Board, strategic partnership of the London Stock Exchange with the Nigerian Stock Exchange and development of the Nigerian Savings Bond, FGN Sukuk Bond and Green Bond amongst several other market-wide initiatives. He was at different times Chief Executive Officer of UBA Stockbrokers Limited and UBA Asset Management Limited, both subsidiaries of United Bank for Africa Plc. He led the transformation of both businesses from being loss-making entities into sustainably profitable businesses, ranking top-5 in their respective segments. In the course of his career, he led the Corporate Finance practice of Afrinvest West Africa (formerly Sectrust) and was the Chief Investment Officer of First Alliance Pensions (now part of ARM Pensions). Haruna’s career traversed the Securities and Exchange Commission and Kakawa Asset Management Limited.
An award-winning Executive and alumnus of the Lagos Business School, IESE Spain, and Venture Capital Institute of America, Jalo is a graduate of Economics and has a post-graduate degree in Business Administration. He is a Chartered Stockbroker, Associate of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI) United Kingdom, and a member of the Institute of Capital Market Registrars. Mr. Waziri provides thought leadership perspectives on topical issues, particularly on the economy and financial markets on various global platforms
Dirk Bullmann joined CLS in 2022 as Global Head of Public Policy and is responsible for formulating, developing and implementing the global public policy strategy. He represents CLS on all aspects of policymaker engagement, and leads CLS’ innovation-related research activities with a particular focus on Distributed Ledger Technologies and Central Bank Digital Currencies.
Prior to joining CLS, Dirk spent over 20 years at the European Central Bank (ECB) where he held a number of managerial and advisory roles. He led the ECB’s innovation team and the innovation lab in the Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments, and was responsible for coordinating innovation activities amongst the euro area central banks. In addition to this role, Dirk was the Adviser to the ECB’s Chief Services Officer and Adviser to the Director General Market Infrastructure and Payments. He also was the Secretary to the Eurosystem Payment and Settlement Systems Committee
Nick Kerigan is the Managing Director, Head of Innovation, Swift
In this role, he is responsible for the performance of the innovation strategy, ensuring that innovation delivers on its mandate to accelerate and de-risk the creation of new products and services that deliver value to customers.
Nick has a wealth of experience from over 20 years working in payments and banking across developed and emerging markets. Prior to joining Swift in July 2020, he was Managing Director for Future Payments at Barclays, creating next-gen customer experiences and partnering with FinTechs. His expertise is in digital payments, growth strategies and product development, grounded in behavioural trends.
Nick is a thought leader and top-100 financial sector influencer.
Alina Dragomir joined the Post Trading Team at the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in 2014, where she has been involved in the elaboration of the CSDR Level 2 measures, as well as in other regulatory and supervisory convergence measures related to CSDs and settlement. Alina coordinates ESMA’s activities related to TARGET2-Securities (T2S). She also coordinates ESMA’s work on the implementation of the DLT Pilot Regime in the EU.
Prior to this, Alina worked for the Romanian Financial Supervisory Authority for 7 years, where she followed post trading issues. In this capacity, she took part in the Council negotiations of EMIR and CSDR. She also contributed to the
work of European Commission expert groups, as well as CESR and then ESMA post trading expert committees.
She holds an MSc in Economics from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. Alina has extensive experience and expertise in EU policy and regulation covering CSDs and securities settlement.
Olga Jordão is the CEO of Euronext Securities Porto and the Head of Client Service of Euronext Securities, the unified network of Euronext CSDs.
While ensuring a continued strong presence of the Central Securities Depository in Portugal, Olga also oversees the pan-European client service teams to deliver service excellence to local and international clients.
Olga joined Euronext at a pivotal moment in 2021, when the group that operates the third largest CSD network in Europe combined its four CSDs into a new umbrella brand and launched its “Growth for Impact 2024” strategy. She has close to 30 years of professional experience in the post-trade sector and has held multiple roles in Luxembourg and in France heading up middle and back-office operations at a major global custodian, serving sophisticated global asset managers and leading strategic transformation projects. Olga is the former branch manager of State Street Bank International, Paris and also has vast experience in key account management, leading global teams and driving cross-functional initiatives.
Olga is a keen supporter of diversity, inclusion and sustainability initiatives. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Foreign Languages (English & German) from the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne and an Executive Masters of Business Administration from TRIUM (HEC, NYU, LSE).
Jennifer Robertson joined the European Commission in 2004 and has worked in DG Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union since 2005. She is currently a Head of Unit in the unit responsible for financial markets infrastructure. Previously she worked on retail financial services issues and SME finance in various departments of the European Commission.
Before working at the Commission, she worked as a senior economist for 5 years at the European Savings Banks Group on issues ranging from the introduction of the euro to the integration of European financial services markets. Her professional experience also includes working as an economic researcher for a financial communications consultancy in Washington DC, USA.
She is a graduate of the University of Glasgow (UK) and received a Master degree in International Economics and European Studies at the School for Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University (Italy and USA).
Andrea Gentilini has been Head of Financial Market Infrastructures
division of the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) since February 2017. He is also ESMA Internal Coordinator within the CSSF and represents the CSSF in several ESMA Standing Committees (MSC, SSF Market, RSC, DSC). Since March 2023, he has been appointed Chair of the ESMA Post Trading Working Group and co-Chair of the T2S Cooperative Arrangement.
Andrea Gentilini has been Chair of the CEMA EMIR Task Force, responsible for the development of EMIR risk indicators, to promote data driven supervision and supervisory convergence, as well as knowledge sharing and peer learning.
Andrea Gentilini joined the CSSF in 2014 and has been working in the Financial Market Infrastructure Division ever since, contributing to the development of the CSSF’s authorisation process for CSDs under CSDR and support the work of the CSSF in the policy activity related to CSDR, EMIR and SFTR. Before joining the CSSF in 2014, he worked 15 years in the financial sector in Luxembourg (Senior Manager at PwC Luxembourg, portfolio manager in a Luxembourg based management company) and in China (head of international business in a Chinese fund management company, based in Shenzhen).
Andrea Gentilini was born in Milan, Italy and studied economics at Bocconi University, where he obtained also a Master’s degree in economics.
Andrea is married with 1 child. He holds Italian and Luxembourgish nationality
Jesus Benito is Head Domestic Custody & TR Operations, SIX.
He was involved in the European CSD Association (ECSDA) as member of its Board of Directors and Executive Committee. Nowadays, He is the T2S CSD Steering Group (“CSG”) Chairman from its inception in 2012.
Jesús Benito has participated in numerous international Groups, among others: the European Commission’s Clearing and Settlement Advisory and Monitoring Expert Group (CESAME and CESAMEII), Monitoring Operating Group (MOG), etc.
Before joining Iberclear in 2000, he worked for Banco de España from 1988 to 2000, as Head of Section responsible for CSD links and securities settlement policy issues.
He has a Business Degree from Complutense University.
Ilse Peeters, Director, is the Head of Government Relations and Public Affairs at Euroclear SA/NV. Government Relations was part of the Euroclear Corporate Strategy Division until 2017. It is now part of the Compliance, Regulatory Management and Public Affairs Division.
Ms Peeters works closely with key EU public policy stakeholders on relevant industry issues, while ensuring the effective external communication of Euroclear’s strategy. Over the last ten years, she has been involved in the main regulatory initiatives that have shaped the post-trade industry. Her recent focus is on technological innovations such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and ICOs and their regulatory and legal challenges.
Attila Toth is working for EBRD as Principal in the Capital & Financial Market Development Team since 2018. He is specialized in equity capital market and capital market infrastructure development where he built up a 20-year experience. He started his career at the Hungarian Debt Management Agency in 1997 and joined the Budapest Stock Exchange in late 1999. During his 16-year career at the BSE he was responsible for business and product development, trading and post-trading. Between 2008 and 2016 he was the Deputy CEO of the stock exchange responsible for issuer and trading member relations, product development, trading and business strategy. He was chairman of the Supervisory Board and also the member of the Board of Directors of the Central Depository and Clearing House of Hungary. He took part in international capital market development projects and spent years in the corporate finance and private equity industry specialised for SMEs before joining the EBRD.
Attila is highly devoted to the improvement of financial literacy. He was the Chief Secretary of the Foundation for Financial Self-Awareness, an institution founded by the Budapest Stock Exchange and later the member of the Board of the Money Compass Foundation of the National Bank of Hungary. Attila Toth has a Master Degree in Finance from the Budapest Corvinus University and has a EFFAS/ACIIA International Programme of Investment Analysis Diploma.
Mr. Kong Qingwen is the Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation Limited (CSDC). He has worked in Shanghai Stock Exchange and CSDC starting from 1994, and worked as Deputy Director and Director of CSDC’s Registration and Depository Department starting from 2002.
In 2010, he was appointed a member of the preparatory group of China Securities Finance Corporation (CSF), one of CSRC’s programs, and then served as the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of CSF from 2012. He then served as a Board Member and Deputy Chief Executive Officer of CSDC from 2015.
Mr. Kong holds a Master of Science degree.
The difference in efficiency between single and multi-currency/CSD/timezone markets
Alina Dragomir joined the Post Trading Team at the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in 2014, where she has been involved in the elaboration of the CSDR Level 2 measures, as well as in other regulatory and supervisory convergence measures related to CSDs and settlement. Alina coordinates ESMA’s activities related to TARGET2-Securities (T2S). She also coordinates ESMA’s work on the implementation of the DLT Pilot Regime in the EU.
Prior to this, Alina worked for the Romanian Financial Supervisory Authority for 7 years, where she followed post trading issues. In this capacity, she took part in the Council negotiations of EMIR and CSDR. She also contributed to the
work of European Commission expert groups, as well as CESR and then ESMA post trading expert committees.
She holds an MSc in Economics from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. Alina has extensive experience and expertise in EU policy and regulation covering CSDs and securities settlement.
Michele Hillery is General Manager of Equity Clearing and DTC Settlement Service at The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). In this role, Michele has direct responsibility for the day-to-day management of equity clearing for trades executed on the major U.S. exchanges and other equity trading venues. She also oversees our ongoing efforts to collaborate with and build industry support for modernizing and transforming DTCC’s core businesses.
Michele has over 20 years in the industry and has held various positions within Product Management, Quality Assurance and Operations. Prior to joining DTCC’s Equity Clearing Product Management in 2013, Michele led the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation’s Mortgage Backed Securities Division (MBSD) where she managed the operations of the business and had responsibility over project development.
She earned a BBS from University of Limerick, Ireland and a MS from New York University.
Charlie Geffen was appointed by the UK Government as Chair of the Accelerated Settlement Taskforce in December 2022.
The Taskforce was established to examine the case for moving the UK to a T+1 settlement cycle and the basis on which this could be implemented.
Charlie was previously the Senior Partner at the international law firm Ashurst and led the Corporate practice of US law firm Gibson Dunn in London. His legal practice focused on corporate finance and M&A.
Since then he has served on a number of corporate boards in the financial services and energy sectors and is a Senior Adviser at the consultancy Flint Global.
He also serves as Chair of Council at the University of Surrey and on the boards of a number of other not for profit organisations.
Jesús Sánchez is Head of Settlement Services, SIX.
He has over 30 years in the industry in different positions, but mainly in the areas of Settlement and Custody.
He chairs the Settlement Working Group of the European Central Securities Depositories Association (ECSDA), where the ECSDA CSDR Penalties Framework was agreed and with settlement efficiency being one of the key issues, and the Market Settlement Efficiency (MSE) workshop of T2S, where relevant issues regarding efficiency are assessed and support further discussions in national communities. He is also member of various market committees and expert groups at national and international level such as the T2S CSDs Steering Group (CSG), the Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo), the Spanish National Stakeholder Group (NSG).
Prior to joining Iberclear in 2006, he worked at Citibank for 14 years, being the head of respective Equities and Fixed Income Settlement departments.
He has a degree in Economics and Business by Universidad Autónoma of Madrid and an Executive Master of Business Administration.
Miguel Espinoza is the Head of Product for Montran’s CSD solution and the Solution Delivery Manager of the Securities and Trading division. He has been actively involved in the development and implementation of over 25 Central Securities Depositories around the world. Coming from an IT background, Miguel has been combining his technical and business knowledge to provide Montran
clients with the best possible CSD solution adopting best practices and focusing on settlement optimization and efficiency.
As head of product, Miguel is responsible for the general development and the definition of the product roadmap of the Montran CSD solution. With his team, he is constantly reviewing and researching the implemented processes, new initiatives, and emerging technologies to determine possible enhancements and the way forward for Montran’s CSD product
James is a Senior Advisor within BNY Mellon’s Public Policy and Government Affairs department. His main areas of responsibility are European regulatory and self-regulatory initiatives relating to capital markets, market infrastructure, and post-trade services.
In recent years, he has also focused on digital-related initiatives, such as the DLT Pilot Regime, the Regulation on Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA), and central bank digital currency.
He is a member of several regulatory contact groups, including the European Central Bank’s Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo), and the Consultative Working Group of the ESMA Post Trading Standing Committee. He is co-chair of the AMI-SeCo Corporate Events Group.
He is also a member of numerous industry association working groups, chairs the AFME working group on MiCA, and is co-chair of the AFME Post Trade Executive Committee.
Jean-Paul Lambotte is product manager at Euroclear, in charge of the communication channels. He has a large experience in messaging standards (ISO15022, ISO2022) gathered during more than 20 years working for multiple financial institutions, including several (I)CSDs.
He is member of the SMPG (Securities Market Practice Group) where he represents the Eurobonds (XS) market since 2018. Thanks to its involvement in important market initiatives such as T2S, SRDII, SCoRE standards, CPBR+, Mr Lambotte has built a transversal view on current trends regarding ISO standards evolutions. He is currently chairing the ECSDA Messaging Task-Force.
Jean-Paul has a degree of Civil Engineer in Computer Sciences and a Master in Financial Risks Management from UCLouvain.
Charifa El Otmani is part of the Capital Markets Strategy team at Swift, responsible for defining and driving the company vision for Securities and FX. During 17 years at Swift, Charifa has held a variety of roles, working on securities market infrastructure initiatives with the Eurosystem, DTCC and others and more recently, as Head of Global Payments Innovation (gpi) EMEA, leading efforts to establish a new norm for cross-border payments. Prior to Swift, she worked at The Bank of New York Mellon, in the Custody business, before moving to Accenture and BNP Paribas. Charifa holds a Master degree in Financial Markets, specialised in the management of post-trade operations.
Philip Brown is Chief Executive Officer of Clearstream Banking Luxembourg S.A., member of the Executive Board of Clearstream Holding AG and Head of Global RM, Sales and Client Services. He joined the company in July 2005 after twelve years in the custody and clearing business, in a variety of front office sales and relationship management positions. Prior to joining Clearstream, he spent 7 years at The Bank of New York, latterly as Managing Director and Head of European Sales, 2 years at Morgan Stanley International and 7 years at Barclays PLC. He holds a degree in Banking, Insurance and Finance from University College North Wales, Bangor, is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and is currently Chair of the International Securities Services Association (ISSA).
Vahan Stepanyan has been the Chief Executive Officer of the CDA since April 2006. After graduating from Yerevan State Economic University, he was closely involved in the development of the securities market regulation framework working at the Ministry of Finance (1998-1999) and then the Securities Commission of the Republic of Armenia. In 2001, Mr. Stepanyan joined the Central Depository of Armenia – first in the capacity of the Head of Issuer Relations Department, and then as the Deputy CEO.
Adil Mukhamejanov is a Chairman of the Management Board of Central Securities Depository JSC (KCSD) since March 2021. He has over 20 years of experience in the financial industry and securities market of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Prior to joining KCSD Mr. Mukhamejanov was elected to the position of Deputy Chairman of the Management Board at Kazakhstan Stock Exchange JSC. He supervised the issues of trading, clearing activities, functioning of the central counterparty, as well as development of trading and clearing technologies at Kazakhstan Stock Exchange JSC.
In addition, Adil Mukhamejanov spent 17 years with the National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan, where he started his career from the position of Chief Economist of the Settlements and Lending Division of Monetary Operations Department and between 2015 and 2019 years he occupied the position of Deputy Director of the Monetary Operations Department.
Mr. Mukhamejanov graduated from Kazakh Academy of Labor and Social Relations majoring in International Economics in 2002 and from Nazarbayev University in 2019 with EMBA degree.
Jennifer Peve is Managing Director, Head of Strategy and Business Development at DTCC. In this role, Jennifer has overarching responsibility for the firm’s global corporate strategy, digital product development and strategic partnerships and alliances, working across the business, and with clients and third-party providers, to identify opportunities for new product development as well as potential acquisitions, partnerships and mergers to broaden DTCC’s capabilities. She is also responsible for defining the firm’s strategy for new and emerging technology innovation, leading efforts related to the exploration and experimentation of fintech, and working with her colleagues and the industry to advance dialogue on key topics and develop thought leadership. Jennifer is also a member of the firm’s Management Committee.
Jennifer joined DTCC in 2015. Prior to that, she worked at CME Group where she served as Executive Director of OTC Product Management with responsibility for CME’s cleared OTC credit default swaps (CDS) business, including growth strategy, business development, and go-to-market activities.
Jennifer has over 25 years of financial markets expertise, including consulting and practical experience as well as the design, development and deployment of business strategies in a dynamic environment. She has extensive knowledge across the entire product life cycle, including OTC, FX and FX Options, OTC Metals, Stock Lending, OTC Credit Default Swaps, OTC Interest Rate Swaps and Swaptions, OTC Total Return Swaps, F&O, Energy and Equities.
Jennifer currently serves on the Technology Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as well as FINRA’s FinTech Industry Committee and is the former Chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA)’s Banking Working Group. She is a member of SIFMA’s Blockchain Roundtable and is a regular speaker at industry conferences.
Guillaume Eliet has been Chief Executive Officer of Euroclear ESES CSDs (Euroclear France, Euroclear Belgium and Euroclear Nederland) since 01 September 2021.
Mr. Eliet was head of Regulatory, Compliance and Public Affairs, for Euroclear group Since 2017.
Prior to joining Euroclear, he worked at the French Stock Market Authority, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), where he was the Deputy General Secretary, heading the Regulation Policy and International Affairs division. Guillaume had previously been head of the Asset Management division within the AMF in Paris.
A lawyer by profession, Mr. Eliet graduated with a postgraduate Diploma in Business Law and Taxation, as well as a Master’s Degree in Business Law at Sorbonne University.
Javier Hernani took up his role of Head of the Securities Services business unit and he is member of the Executive Board of Six Group, since January 2021, after the takeover of BME by SIX. He is also CEO of Bolsas y Mercados Españoles, Sociedad Holding de Mercados y Sistemas Financieros, SA, since April 2017. He served as General Manager of BME from December 2012 to April 2017, with the specific role of coordinating the action of business units and corporate areas. Chairman of the Risk and Security Committees as well as Member of the board of several subsidiaries. Previously, he joined BME as Chief Financial Officer and member of the Executive Committee, assuming the role of conducting the integration process of the newly created group and leading the IPO process which took the company public as of 14th July 2006.
Prior to its incorporation to Bolsas y Mercados Españoles, Mr. Hernani was Deputy General Manager of the Bilbao Stock Exchange (until 2003), CFO of Norbolsa, S.V.B. (until 1998) and Consultant in Coopers & Lybrand Brussels (until 1989).
Mr. Hernani earned a Degree in Economics and Business by University of Deusto in 1986, a Master’s Degree in European Economic Studies, specialising in Economics, by The College of Europe in Brussels in 1988 and a Master’s Degree in Advanced Management by University of Deusto in 1997.
Mr. Sampson is President of CDS. Kevin has over 20 years of capital markets experience managing high-performing teams across multiple functions and business areas, including sales and business development, operations, customer support and product development. His collaborative, client-centric approach has enabled Kevin to achieve positive business results while building long-term, trusted relationships with peers and stakeholders across the industry. Most recently, Kevin was President, Equity Trading for TMX Group Inc. where he managed the trading businesses of Canada’s premier equity exchanges (Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange and TSX Alpha Exchange).
Samuel Riley is the Chief Executive Officer of Clearstream Holding AG and Head of Clearstream Securities Services. Previously, he had a long-standing career at Citigroup, where he most recently served as Global Head of Custody Operations. His earlier responsibilities there included leading the EMEA Service Centers & Shared Services organisation and being an Executive Board Member of Citigroup Global Markets Deutschland AG. Samuel Riley holds a degree in Business Management from Wolverhampton University.
Mark Gem has been with Clearstream for over 20 years and a board member since 2007, focusing on network management, primary markets activity and compliance. He was responsible for Clearstream’s T2S strategy. He currently chairs Clearstream’s Risk Committee, amongst many other things overseeing the post-Brexit organisation of Clearstream’s UK business and Clearstream’s overall response to the COVID-19 crisis. He represents Luxembourg on the boards of SWIFT and sits on the board of Regis-TR, the Luxembourg-based trade repository. He has been on the board of ECSDA since 2002 and served as Vice-Chairman under Joël Mérère until 2013. In May 2021, Mark was elected ECSDA Chair.
Mark has a first class degree from Oxford University in Modern History.
Paul Symons is Group Chief of Staff for Euroclear SA/NV, providing advice and support to the Euroclear SA/NV Chief Executive and the Euroclear SA/NV Management Committee. He was appointed to this role on 1 September 2020.
In addition, Mr Symons was appointed Chief Sustainability Officer for the Euroclear Group in September 2021.
He also sits on the Board of Euroclear UK & International (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Euroclear SA/NV) as a Non-Executive Director.
From 2018-2020, Mr Symons was the Head of the Euroclear SA/NV Corporate Secretariat Division and Secretary to the Euroclear SA/NV Board of Directors.
From 2002 – 2018, Mr Symons was Group Head of Government Relations at Euroclear ,responsible for managing Euroclear’s relationships with those stakeholders who influenced the regulatory and political context in which Euroclear operated.
He has been a board member of the European Central Securities Depositories Association (ECSDA) and chaired the Association’s Policy Group until March 2018.
He has also been a member of the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) Post-Trade Consultative Group, and a variety of other European post-trade Committees.
Mr Symons joined Euroclear in 2002, following the merger with CRESTCo (now Euroclear UK &International), the central securities depository for UK securities.
Previously, Mr Symons spent seven years at the Bank of England in a variety of roles, including a period working as the Private Secretary to the Executive Director of the Banking Supervision and Banking Departments.
Francisco Béjar Núñez is Head of the CSD Services of SIX BME group.
Mr. Béjar has 30 years of experience in post-trading, mainly in areas such as Settlement and Custody, Cash and Treasury and Corporate Trust, from a double point of view, as custodian and as market infrastructure. He is member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of ECSDA (European Central Securities Depository Association), and member of various market committees and expert groups at national and international level, such as the Clearing, Settlement and Registration Experts Group chaired by the CNMV (Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores), the Post-Trading Standing Committee´s consultative Working Group of ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority), the Harmonisation Steering Group chaired by the ECB (European Central Bank)
Olga Cantillo is the Executive Vice President and CEO of Latin American Stock Exchange (Latinex). She has over 30 years of professional experience in the financial services industry.
Ms. Cantillo is currently also President of the Ibero-American Federation of Stock Exchanges (FIAB), Director of the Central Securities Depository Association of the Americas (ACSDA), Secretary of the Association of Capital Markets of the Americas (AMERCA), Member of the Independent Advisory Committee of the UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative (SSE), Independent Director of BI-Bank Panama, and Director of Fundación Calicanto.
Prior to joining Armenia Securities Exchange (AMX) in 2017, Hayk Yeganyan spent 4 years at the Central Bank of Armenia as the advisor to the Governor covering areas related to capital markets development, accumulative pension savings industry and being in charge of attracting foreign financial institutions into Armenia, covering both business development and relationship management aspects. During his tenure, he also served as member of the Supervisory Board of NASDAQ OMX Armenia for 1 year.
Before joining the Central Bank of Armenia, he spent several years in London working within the private banking industry covering Russia and CIS region, and parallel to that also acting as the representative of the Armenian Development Agency in the UK. Hayk Yeganyan is a member of the Supervisory Board of Central Depository of Armenia, OJSC.
He started his career at Gazprom Armenia in 2006, where from 2007 to 2010 he served as head of securities market operations department, acting as company’s pre-IPO internal lead manager. During that period together with his team, he successfully organised the first two public bond issuances in Armenia in 2007 and 2008. He holds a B.A. in Financial Economics from University of Leicester (UK), and MSc in Management from Imperial College London.
Mr. Alao is the Chief Operating Officer of FMDQ Depository Limited, a subsidiary of FMDQ Group PLC. Emmanuel’s work experience of over twenty-nine (29) years spans Technology, Project Management, and Consulting functions in various organisations including Citibank Nigeria, FCMB Limited, London International Financial Futures & Options Exchange, JPMorgan Chase, Santander UK, KPMG UK, and Air Peace Nigeria Limited. Prior to joining FMDQ, Mr. Alao was the Chief Information Officer at Air Peace Nigeria Limited.
Jenny Hancock is an economist who has specialised in policy development and supervision of financial market infrastructures. She is currently on secondment from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) as a member of Secretariat at the BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI). At the CPMI she has been supporting the joint work with the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) on policy development and implementation of the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures. This has included work on business continuity planning, stablecoins, wholesale digital tokens, FX settlement risk, CCP resilience, recovery and resolution, non-default losses and margin.
Prior to joining CPMI, Jenny held management roles in the department at the RBA responsible for oversight, supervision and policy development for CCPs, CSDs/SSSs and systemically important payment systems. She holds a Masters of Economics from the University of New South Wales and has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst programme. She has written on various issues related to financial market infrastructures and retail payment systems, including a BIS Quarterly Review article On the future of securities settlement.
Financing, facilitation of links, and removing other hurdles
Mark Gem has been with Clearstream for over 20 years and a board member since 2007, focusing on network management, primary markets activity and compliance. He was responsible for Clearstream’s T2S strategy. He currently chairs Clearstream’s Risk Committee, amongst many other things overseeing the post-Brexit organisation of Clearstream’s UK business and Clearstream’s overall response to the COVID-19 crisis. He represents Luxembourg on the boards of SWIFT and sits on the board of Regis-TR, the Luxembourg-based trade repository. He has been on the board of ECSDA since 2002 and served as Vice-Chairman under Joël Mérère until 2013. In May 2021, Mark was elected ECSDA Chair.
Mark has a first class degree from Oxford University in Modern History.
Vojtěch Belling has been Executive Director of the Department of Financial Regulation and International Cooperation in the Czech National Bank, the integrated authority for financial market supervision in the Czech Republic, since 2018. Before that, he served as Director of the EU and International Affairs Division in the Czech National Bank (2014-2018), as State Secretary for EU Affairs (2011-2014), and held various positions in the Czech Civil Service since 2002.
Mr Belling is a member of the Board of Supervisors of ESMA, a member of the International Relations Committee of the European Central Bank and an alternate member of the Economic and Financial Committee of the EU. He was also a member of the Management Board of ESMA until September 2022.Mr Belling is active in the academic sphere, lectures law and political science at Charles University in Prague and Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí and Labem. In the past, he was also a lecturer at the University of Heidelberg. He holds a Master’s degree in Law from Charles University in Prague, a PhD degree in Political Science from Charles University in Prague, and Associate Professor degree from Masaryk University in Brno. He published several academic books and many articles, including in the European Law Journal, the International Organizations Law Review and the Zeitschrift für Öffentliches Recht.
Jim Turnbull joined EBRD in 2011 and is the deputy director and head of product for the Capital and Financial Markets Development Department (CFMD). He has over 30 years’ experience in investment banking, pensions investment and funds management having managed both debt and equity portfolios. He has also managed foreign exchange, derivatives and treasury exposures in both emerging and developed markets. As MD of Triarii Advisors, Jim acted as an independent advisor to several asset managers and hedge funds specializing in emerging market investment.
Jim led the project team that created and developed the highly successful AsianBondsOnline fixed income portal for the Asian Development Bank in 2003. He has significant “in-country” expertise as team leader for a large number of capital markets technical assistance projects for several international financial institutions including the implementation of the capital markets development master plan in Thailand, as well as other development assignments in the Philippines, Viet Nam, and Serbia. Between 2015-2020 he was an independent board member for the CSD, Depozitarul Central in Romania.
Jim has written extensively on the technical aspects of local capital market development in emerging markets and financial stability and has a B.Com from University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Indars Ascuks is the CEO of Nasdaq CSD and the Deputy Chairman of ECSDA. Indars has over 20 years’ experience working in financial markets and has been responsible for implementing Nasdaq’s strategic initiatives in the Baltics and Nordic.
Indars has been leading the merger of the four CSDs in Baltic and Iceland into a single Nasdaq CSD and has led the integration process of stock exchanges in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania into the international groups of exchanges, including OMX and Nasdaq.
Indars is actively working in NGOs, such as Baltic Institute of Corporate Governance, as well as was the chair of Latvian Securities Market Association. He has been chairing multiple Boards, including Pensionikeskus in Estonia, Nasdaq OMX Armenia and Emerging Nordic Research.
Abdulla Abdin has Masters in Business Administration from the University of Glamorgan UK, and currently holds the position of Chief Operating Officer– Bahrain Clear. He is the Chairman of the Guarantee Fund Committee and Chairman of the African Middle East Depositories Association (AMEDA). Mr. Abdin has over 31 years of experience in Banking and Capital Market structure, regulations and operations.
Centralized Multi-Entity CSD Solution for an entire Capital Market – Case Study Georgia
Giorgi has been working for National Bank of Georgia since 2001, where he occupied various positions, including specialist at International Reserves Management Division, deputy head of Risk Management
division and head of Macroeconomics Department. Since 2006 Giorgi is heading Financial Markets Department. Giorgi’s responsibilities cover areas of Portfolio management, Risk management, International settlements, Domestic monetary operations and operation of GSSS – Georgian Securities Settlement System.
Giorgi has been actively involved in local currency money and capital market development, and has been at the forefront of many important reforms in related areas. In 2019 he has successfully led the implementation of centralized nationwide system for securities settlements, used for CSD operations and central bank collateral management. The project was undertaken jointly with domestic Stock Exchange and in cooperation with Montran. The system was based on an innovative multi-CSD concept and featured state of the art solutions for ease and efficiency of settlement process, dramatically reduced the risks and operating costs for both public and private sector.
The reform has featured as case study in IMF/WB Guidance Note for Developing Government Local Currency Bond Markets and has been awarded by Central Banking Awards as the best collateral management system.
Giorgi Laliashvili holds Master’s degree from Georgian State University in Banking and Finance and MA in Economics from Center for Development Economics, Williams College, USA.
Rares Togan has been with Montran Corporation for 22 years, performing various roles in multiple implementation projects that cover the entire range of Montran products. Coming from a technical background, Rares has gradually transitioned to the business area of the products, currently undertaking the role of Senior Business Analyst, Securities and Trading.
In this capacity, he has been involved in over 30 implementation projects for Central Securities Depositories and Trading Systems around the world, facilitating business analysis of the client capital markets environment, with the goal of producing accurate and comprehensive solution specifications materials, as well as supporting the transfer of knowledge process by delivering formal training.
Jim manages the Global Network Management (‘GNM’) division at TM and has over 26 years in the financial services industry. His responsibilities include running a team of 25 analysts and network managers who track custodian and market practice in 104 markets and assess risks in over 300 custodians, 145 CSDs and 27 CCPs worldwide. Jim is a subject matter expert on post-trade infrastructure and has led various strategic consulting projects on market infrastructure. Previously, Jim was a senior analyst within TM Network Management evaluating and selecting local and global custodians for clients as well as supporting a variety of consultancy engagements. Prior to joining TM in 1995, he was at Taylor Nelson Sofres as a Project Supervisor in their Financial division.
As the Chief Risk Officer for Euroclear Belgium, Euroclear France and Euroclear Nederland, Pierre Paul Stacanov is responsible for enabling the governance of risks and related opportunities in the three entities. With a strong background in audit and risk management, Mr Stacanov is also closely following up all relevant regulatory matters for the organisation. He is currently chairing the European Central Securities Depositories Association’s (ECSDA) Risk Management Working Group.
Before taking up his current position, he was a senior member of Euroclear Bank’s Network Management division, in charge of maintaining CSD links and managing relationships and improving services with Euroclear Bank’s network of securities and cash service providers. Prior to this, he was Chief Operating Officer of Euroclear Belgium and a member of its Management and Operational Committees. Previously, Mr Stacanov was a member of Euroclear’s Internal Audit division, heading a team responsible for auditing a number of Euroclear divisions and subsidiaries. Before this, as Product Manager for international securities, he developed Euroclear’s new issues services and closely followed the emergence of new currencies into the Eurobond market.
Mr Stacanov received degrees in Law from Ghent University, in Belgium and the European University Center in Nancy, France before joining Euroclear in 1990. He has a Master’s degree in Internal Auditing from the University Antwerp Management School (UAMS) and is a Certified Internal Auditor from the Institute of Internal Auditors.
Mr. Arıkan earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering at Boğaziçi University and his MBA at Yeditepe University. He received his PhD degree from Istanbul Ticaret University in Business Administration. He speaks advance level English and German, also beginner-level Arabic.
He started his career at Microsoft as a Support Engineer in 1998, then a Program Specialist in 1999, and a Program Manager in Windows International Product Development Group since 2000.
Mr. Arıkan joined Ziraat Teknoloji as IT Architecture Manager in 2007. He worked as a Project Management Office Manager in 2009, IT Security Manager in 2011, and was appointed as Corporate Development Director in 2013. In 2014, he worked at Ziraat Hayat ve Emeklilik A.Ş as IT and Corporate Development Group Manager responsible for Information Technologies, Customer Services and Call Center, HR and Support Services.
In 2015, he started to work at the EPİAŞ (Energy Exchange – Enerji Piyasaları İşletme A.Ş.) firstly as a Consultant to Chairman and then appointed to the role Strategy Development Director.
In 2016, he started to work in Borsa Istanbul Group at Takasbank as the Executive Vice President for Information Technology.
Since April 2019, he has been working as General Manager and Board Member at MKK which is Central Securities Depository of Türkiye.
Oleksii Yudin joined National Depository of Ukraine (NDU) as a Chairman of the Board in June 2021. His main objectives in the role are digitalization, risk management and strategy execution.
Prior to NDU Oleksii was employed by UBS Investment Bank in London where he was taking leading role in Global IT and was responsible Equity Swaps platform development.
15+ years of Oleksii’s professional experience is an amalgam of software development, project management and investment banking focused on the post-trade accounting systems.
Oleksii graduated from Faculty of Electronics at National Technical University of Ukraine with a Master degree in Electronics.
Pheona Härtel is Head of Risk, Legal and Compliance. She is experienced in overseeing risk disciplines and has worked for several blue-chip financial organisations in South Africa and internationally, where, among other things, she has led operational process re-engineering; implemented, and expanded upon, compliance and governance principles; and provided strategic risk inputs to CEOs and executives with focus on building and maintaining an “anti-fragile” organisation grounded in resilience and supported by risk management methodologies that are innovative, dynamic and forward thinking.
She holds a LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Pretoria.. She is experienced in overseeing risk disciplines and has worked for several blue-chip financial organisations in South Africa and internationally, where, among other things, she has led operational process re-engineering; implemented, and expanded upon, compliance and governance principles; and provided strategic risk inputs to CEOs and executives with focus on building and maintaining an “anti-fragile” organisation grounded in resilience and supported by risk management methodologies that are innovative, dynamic and forward thinking.
She holds a LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Pretoria.
Adrien Vanderlinden leads the Systemic Risk Office of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which is tasked with identifying, addressing and mitigating systemic threats to DTCC, its clients and the financial industry at
large. He heads DTCC’s interconnectedness risk program and is involved in several other initiatives that are designed to strengthen the resilience of DTCC’s Systemically Important Financial Market Utilities. He is also responsible for developing white papers and other educational materials on systemic risk issues.
Prior to joining DTCC, Adrien held a variety of positions at Euroclear, where he worked closely with global fixed income market participants on tri-party repo services and collateral management solutions.
A Belgian native, Adrien holds a master’s degree in economics from
the University of Leuven (KU Leuven).
The Honorable Caroline D. Pham was sworn in as a CFTC Commissioner on April 14, 2022. Commissioner Pham is a recognized leader in financial services compliance and regulatory strategy and policy. Her substantial experience spans key international issues such as prudential regulation and systemic risk, financial markets, fintech and digital assets, ESG, implementation of global regulatory reforms, and addressing the impact of major disruptions like the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Commissioner Pham is the sponsor of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee.
Previously, Commissioner Pham was a Managing Director at Citigroup where she held various senior roles, including Head of Market Structure for Strategic Initiatives on the Institutional Clients Group Business Development team; Head of Capital Markets Regulatory Strategy and Engagement; Deputy Head of Global Regulatory Affairs; and Global Head of Swap Dealer and Volcker Compliance. She was a member of firmwide governance forums and has held leadership roles in many industry organizations.
Commissioner Pham is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and has received various professional awards. She has a B.A. from UCLA and a J.D. from the George Washington University Law School, where she has served on the Dean’s Advisory Council for Business and Finance Law and was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Law, Economics and Finance.
Market Architecture: from a technical perspective, both DLT and centralised IT technologies do not prevent to collapse the infrastructure roles, was the regulation right in separating the role or is there a difference in DLT that justify such a collapse now?
Business case: is the technology too expensive for all actors to co-sign to use it? Will it lead to more fragmentation?
Interoperability: what do we learn from the first cross-chain repo swap (between HQLAx and Fnality) with different DLT technologies? How do smart contracts further enable automation, e.g. for corporate actions?
Alexandre Kech joined SDX in November 2022 as Head Digital Securities. Over the past 25 years, Alex has constructed a unique career combining finance at BNY Mellon, payments/securities infrastructure and standards at SWIFT, and blockchain and digital assets at Onchain Custodian (ONC). As co-founder and CEO of ONC, Alex led the Singapore and Shanghai-based team that built from scratch a custody and prime brokerage service for crypto and other digital assets. Most recently, he moved to Switzerland to launch and run Citi Ventures’ Blockchain & Digital Asset team to engage across the European ecosystem on emerging use cases for blockchain technologies and digital currencies.
Glen Fernandes is the Head of Digital Business Design for the Euroclear Group. He is responsible for helping shape the transition of Euroclear’s business into a future model driven by digital and data.
Mr Fernandes has previously held senior roles in the Euroclear’s Strategy and Product Division where he was responsible for heading the Fixed Income Primary markets business and leading strategic business development and fintech investment opportunities, to help shape Euroclear’s overall strategic and innovation direction.
Mr Fernandes also co-founded and chairs an industry working group of Central Securities Depositories (CSDs), Custodian banks & Fintechs under the International Securities Services Association (ISSA) to help create a common market understanding for the adoption of Digital Assets and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) in capital markets.
Mr Fernandes has over 19 years of experience in capital markets and financial technology across America, Europe and Asia Pacific. He joined Euroclear in 2014 having earlier worked for securities services business lines at JP Morgan, Nomura, and Lehman Brothers where his work spanned key product/service launches and technology development.
Mr Fernandes holds a Masters in Business Administration from Vlerick Business School Belgium, in addition to Bachelors studies in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering.
Martin Watkins is the Chief Executive of Montis Group where he is building digital CSDs and applying for regulatory approval to settle natively digital and non-native digital securities tokens using innovative blockchain technology, alongside conventional equity and debt. Montis Group was founded and is majority-owned by Archax, the first ever FCA regulated digital securities exchange that also has FCA brokerage, custody, and crypto-asset permissions.
Prior to Montis, Martin was at Ernst & Young (EY) for 7 years where, as EMEIA Lead for Exchanges and FMIs, he worked on multiple blockchain initiatives with fnality, Paxos, Euroclear, R3, DTCC, STRATE, Euronext, The Royal Mint/CME and TMX.
Before EY, Martin was a member of senior management at Euroclear (CRESTCo) in London and was elected Chairman of the Euroclear Group Operations Task Force focused on harmonising and restructuring services. This followed several years in Paris as an Executive member of AtosEuronext, running all LCH.Clearnet SA IT services across Europe, clearing €1.7 Trillion of equity, fixed income, and derivative transactions per day.
Martin is a former Board member and Trustee of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI), where he was Founding Chairman of the International Regulations Forum and Chairman of the FinTech Forum. He is responsible for the Archax group relationship and participation in the International Securities Services Association (ISSA).
Martin is a Chartered Honorary Fellow of CISI, a Fellow of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors. He sits on the Court of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers and is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.
Jennifer Peve is Managing Director, Head of Strategy and Business Development at DTCC. In this role, Jennifer has overarching responsibility for the firm’s global corporate strategy, digital product development and strategic partnerships and alliances, working across the business, and with clients and third-party providers, to identify opportunities for new product development as well as potential acquisitions, partnerships and mergers to broaden DTCC’s capabilities. She is also responsible for defining the firm’s strategy for new and emerging technology innovation, leading efforts related to the exploration and experimentation of fintech, and working with her colleagues and the industry to advance dialogue on key topics and develop thought leadership. Jennifer is also a member of the firm’s Management Committee.
Jennifer joined DTCC in 2015. Prior to that, she worked at CME Group where she served as Executive Director of OTC Product Management with responsibility for CME’s cleared OTC credit default swaps (CDS) business, including growth strategy, business development, and go-to-market activities.
Jennifer has over 25 years of financial markets expertise, including consulting and practical experience as well as the design, development and deployment of business strategies in a dynamic environment. She has extensive knowledge across the entire product life cycle, including OTC, FX and FX Options, OTC Metals, Stock Lending, OTC Credit Default Swaps, OTC Interest Rate Swaps and Swaptions, OTC Total Return Swaps, F&O, Energy and Equities.
Jennifer currently serves on the Technology Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as well as FINRA’s FinTech Industry Committee and is the former Chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA)’s Banking Working Group. She is a member of SIFMA’s Blockchain Roundtable and is a regular speaker at industry conferences.
Ondrej Dusilek is a Chief Executive Officer of the CSD Prague He started his professional career in 2005 as an analyst at UNIVYC, a.s., which was a subsidiary of the Prague Stock Exchange, which in 2010 was renamed to Centrální depozitář cenných papíru, a.s. (CSD Prague) and took over securities registration from the Securities Center owned by the Ministry of Finance. In 2012, he completed a City of London Corporation internship, which included a two-month work experience at the London Stock Exchange in the Regulatory Strategy Department. He also participated in 2013 and 2014 as an advisor to a World Bank project to modernize the capital market in Azerbaijan. In 2017, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the CSD Prague and two years later was appointed as the CEO of the CSD Prague and was also elected to the Exchange Chamber (Board of Directors) of the Prague Stock Exchange.
He graduated from the Faculty of Economics at VSB-TU Ostrava with a degree in Finance (2003) and a degree in Euro government (2005). In 2016 he completed the Diploma for graduates in Banking at the University of London.
Nathan is the Deputy Head of the Capital Markets Supervision function at the Malta Financial Services Authority (‘MFSA’). He had joined the MFSA in 2010 where he has been primarily involved in any policy and supervisory work in relation to Secondary Markets and Post-Trading market infrastructures. Nathan also Chairs the DLT Working Group at the European Securities and Markets Authority (‘ESMA’). Additionally, at ESMA level Nathan is an active member of various Committees and Working Groups such as the Markets Standing Committee, the Post-Trading Working Group, the Senior Supervisory Forum, and also holds a College seat at the Third Country CCP Supervisory College. In the past, Nathan co-chaired on the EMIR REFIT and EMIR 2.2 dossiers during the Maltese Presidency at the Council of the EU, but has also actively followed discussions on the DLT Pilot Regime, CSDR Refit package, MiFIR Review and EMIR Refit (2023) as the expert for Malta at working party stages. Nathan is also a part-time visiting lecturer at the University of Malta and holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours Degree) in Banking and Finance (Melit.) and a Scientific Masters in Finance (Leic.).
How do the two worlds of DLT native and traditional book-entry securities work together?
What is the difference between securitisation and tokenisation of assets?
Can tokenisation and servicing of tokenised assets by a Settlement System Infrastructure inject liquidity and trust in the new market segments?
“Same activities, same risk, same rules” – is it so true?
Now that we have seen some failures, e.g. FTX, what regulation should apply to DLT Settlement Systems and their operators?
Barnaby has worked for over 15 years in the post-trade capital markets space: leading transforming custody and cash businesses to the point of market leadership. Until 2018, he led Standard Chartered Bank’s custody business in Asia and prior to that he launched BNP Paribas’ custody business in Asia.
Throughout Barnaby’s career, he has focused on market structure and connectivity as a key theme. Having helped to launch clearing and back office outsourcing solutions in Asia-Pacific, he has since worked with regulators, global exchanges, clearing houses, brokers and investors to ensure that new technologies (such as DLT, AI and others) can be smoothly deployed as players reach for ever improving levels of efficiency.
This connectivity continues at #theValueExchange, where Barnaby’s attention is now focused on delivering actionable, statistical insights on key market dynamics. Leveraging unique benchmarking and insight technologies, Barnaby is now helping market participants to make the right decisions and giving sales organizations the data and tools they need to maximize their revenues in changing times.
Jens Hachmeister, Managing Director at Clearstream Holding AG is Head of New Digital Markets, Data & Issuer Solutions and a member of the Clearstream Management Board. After completing a banking apprenticeship and a degree in business administration, he began his career as a management consultant at KPMG before joining Xetra Market Development at Deutsche Börse AG in June 2000. Jens was Head of Operations and Infrastructure Development and part of the Management Committee Xetra until January 2009. From mid-April 2010 to December 2015, he was the Chief HR Officer of Deutsche Börse AG and in mid-August 2015, he assumed the newly created role of Chief of Staff and Head of Strategic Execution to the Group’s CEO. In April 2018, Jens created the New Digital Markets Area as one of the key pillars of Deutsche Börse’s DLT and blockchain strategy before taking on additional responsibility as Clearstream’s Head of Issuer Services in February 2020 and Data & Connectivity as of October 2022. In his current role he is driving the digitization of the company, its markets solutions, products and services.
Vipin Y.S Mahabirsingh holds a B.Tech (First Class, Hons.) degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Mauritius, an M.Phil in Microelectronic Engineering and Semiconductor Physics from the University of Cambridge and an MBA (with distinction) from Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University. He joined the Central Depository & Settlement Co. Ltd at its inception in 1996 as Systems Manager and was appointed General Manager in July 1997.
He was then appointed as Managing Director in November 2005. In his capacity as Managing Director of CDS, he also provides consultancy services to African stock exchanges and central depositories. He was the systems vendor’s Project Director in the implementation of trading and depository systems at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (2004/2006), Bank of Ghana (2004), Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (2006), Botswana Stock Exchange (2008/2012), Lusaka Stock Exchange (2008) and Bolsa de Valores de Mocambique (2013). He supervised the implementation of an automated trading system at the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange in 2015 and has spearheaded the replacement of the trading and depository systems at the Lusaka Stock Exchange which went live in December 2017.
He is a member of the Technical Committee that has been set up by the African Stock Exchanges Association (ASEA) to drive the implementation of the African Exchanges Linkage Project (ALEP). He is also a member of the Ratings Committee of CARE Ratings Africa. Vipin has been appointed as member of the Product Advisory Committee (PAC) of the Digital Token Identifier Foundation (DTIF). DTIF’s mission is to provide the golden source reference data for the unique identification of digital tokens based on ISO’s new standard for digital assets, ISO 24165.
Andreas Lundell is the Head of Product for Nasdaq’s CSD technology offering at Nasdaq Market Technology, responsible for developing the long-term vision for Nasdaq’s CSD technology product portfolio, while leading a team of post-trade technology professionals in their work to ensure high-quality and efficient delivery of CSD solutions tailored for the needs of tomorrow. Andreas is based in Stockholm, Sweden and has over 20 years of experience in the post trade industry. Prior to joining Nasdaq in 2015, Andreas held various position within Euroclear Sweden
Ian is a senior Business Development executive with over 30 years of capital markets experience gained through trading, regulatory and software product-marketing roles at investment banks, exchanges and technology providers. Ian focuses on R3’s Digital Exchange and DLT initiatives
Manmohan Singh is a senior economist with the IMF. He writes extensively on topical issues including collateral velocity (a term he coined), rehypothecation of collateral, monetary policy and collateral, role of global custodians, and why some EM collateral should be part of global plumbing, and (recently) digital money, stablecoins and access to central bank reserves. His new book, Collateral Markets and Financial Plumbing, looks at all the above topics from the lens of financial collateral. Manmohan has led workshops for the IMF to official sector policy makers on the impact of regulations on financial markets. He holds a Ph.D. and M.B.A. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. from Allegheny College. His recent articles are available at https://sites.google.com/view/msinghdc/home
Holger Neuhaus is Head of the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) Market Innovation and Integration Division in the Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments. His Division develops the ECB/Eurosystem’s approach in relation to innovation and integration in the field of payments and post-trade services.
Until November 2019 he headed the Money Market and Liquidity Division which provides market analysis of euro area money markets and ensures the execution of monetary policy through the Eurosystem’s open market operations and liquidity management. It also had a lead role in developing and transitioning to a new reference interest rate for the money market.
He previously worked as Counsellor to the ECB’s Executive Board, headed the Financial Markets and Banking Statistics Section and was seconded to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as Senior Policy Advisor.
Before joining the ECB he worked for the Deutsche Bundesbank and a portfolio management company, inter alia in the field of foreign reserve management and financial market research. Holger Neuhaus studied economics at the Universities of Essen and Toronto.
Mr Piero Cipollone has been a member of the Governing Board and Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy from 1 January 2020. In this capacity, he is also a member of the joint Governing Board of the Insurance Supervisory Authority (IVASS). After graduating in Economics from ‘La Sapienza’ University of Rome, he obtained an M.A. in Economics from Stanford University. In 2001 he was visiting scholar at UC Berkeley.
In 1993 he joined the Economic Research Department of the Bank of Italy, first in the Balance of Payments Office and then as Head of the Labour Market Office. In 2007 he was appointed Special Commissioner of the Italian research institute INVALSI, and then President until 2011. From 2010 to 2014 he was the World Bank Group Executive Director for Italy, Albania, Greece, Malta, Portugal, San Marino and Timor-Leste, as well as Chairman of the Audit Committee. He returned to the Bank of Italy in 2014 and in November he was appointed Head of the Planning and Controls Directorate.
From 2017 to 2019, he was Deputy Director General of the Directorate General for Accounting and Controls, which in September 2017 became the Directorate General for Currency Circulation and Accounting. From September 2018 to September 2019 he was Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister. From 1 October 2019 to 31 December 2019 he was Managing Director responsible for high-level consultancy to the Governing Board on matters concerning the organization of the Bank’s functions and institutional relations.
Author and co-author of many articles and papers on trade, labour economics and education economics, published in a variety of academic journals, including American Economic Review and Journal of the European Economic Association, he also taught at both the Luiss University in Rome and the University of L’Aquila.
A former Banking Executive with 22+ years of experience, including most recently Global Head of Product Management for Transaction Banking at Deutsche Bank, Rhom has developed an interest in creating digital businesses for finance and finance related areas. He brings experience of working across a wide variety of wholesale banking businesses and functions including sales, trading, product management, and technology to his role at Fnality. The majority of his experience has been developing businesses where the product is at the intersection of finance and technology.
Haruna Jalo-Waziri is the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of CSCS Plc, Nigeria’s capital market infrastructure. Since his appointment in 2017, he takes full responsibility for the leadership of the institution towards diversifying the earnings and repositioning the core operations for growth and efficiency gains. Growing profit by 18% CAGR in his four years of stewardship and consistently delivering >20% return on average equity, including the pandemic year, Jalo continues to position CSCS as a leading financial market infrastructure in Africa, with focus on deepening the Nigerian market. Jalo, a member of the Advisory Board of BusinessDay Media, is a Non-Executive Director on the Boards of NG Clearing Limited and Lagos Commodities and Futures Exchange Limited. Jalo, who is a Non-Executive Director of the International Securities Services Association (ISSA), Switzerland, also represents the World Forum of Central Securities Depositories on the Operating Committee of ISSA. He is the Vice President of the Africa and Middle East Depositories Association (AMEDA) and an active member of Nigeria’s SEC-led Nigerian Capital Market Committee. Jalo, serves on the Institute’s Annual Workshop Organising Committee and plays active roles in different engagements and initiatives of the Institute. He chaired the Organising Committee of Nigeria’s Economic Summit in 2021 and continues to provide support to the Nigeria Economic Summit Group.
He was previously Executive Director, Capital Markets at The Nigerian Stock Exchange (now Nigerian Exchange Group Plc), where he led cross-functional teams responsible for the recovery of primary and secondary markets between 2012 and 2017. He co-managed a number of initiatives at the Exchange, including the launch of the Premium Board, strategic partnership of the London Stock Exchange with the Nigerian Stock Exchange and development of the Nigerian Savings Bond, FGN Sukuk Bond and Green Bond amongst several other market-wide initiatives. He was at different times Chief Executive Officer of UBA Stockbrokers Limited and UBA Asset Management Limited, both subsidiaries of United Bank for Africa Plc. He led the transformation of both businesses from being loss-making entities into sustainably profitable businesses, ranking top-5 in their respective segments. In the course of his career, he led the Corporate Finance practice of Afrinvest West Africa (formerly Sectrust) and was the Chief Investment Officer of First Alliance Pensions (now part of ARM Pensions). Haruna’s career traversed the Securities and Exchange Commission and Kakawa Asset Management Limited.
An award-winning Executive and alumnus of the Lagos Business School, IESE Spain, and Venture Capital Institute of America, Jalo is a graduate of Economics and has a post-graduate degree in Business Administration. He is a Chartered Stockbroker, Associate of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI) United Kingdom, and a member of the Institute of Capital Market Registrars. Mr. Waziri provides thought leadership perspectives on topical issues, particularly on the economy and financial markets on various global platforms
Dirk Bullmann joined CLS in 2022 as Global Head of Public Policy and is responsible for formulating, developing and implementing the global public policy strategy. He represents CLS on all aspects of policymaker engagement, and leads CLS’ innovation-related research activities with a particular focus on Distributed Ledger Technologies and Central Bank Digital Currencies.
Prior to joining CLS, Dirk spent over 20 years at the European Central Bank (ECB) where he held a number of managerial and advisory roles. He led the ECB’s innovation team and the innovation lab in the Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments, and was responsible for coordinating innovation activities amongst the euro area central banks. In addition to this role, Dirk was the Adviser to the ECB’s Chief Services Officer and Adviser to the Director General Market Infrastructure and Payments. He also was the Secretary to the Eurosystem Payment and Settlement Systems Committee
Nick Kerigan is the Managing Director, Head of Innovation, Swift
In this role, he is responsible for the performance of the innovation strategy, ensuring that innovation delivers on its mandate to accelerate and de-risk the creation of new products and services that deliver value to customers.
Nick has a wealth of experience from over 20 years working in payments and banking across developed and emerging markets. Prior to joining Swift in July 2020, he was Managing Director for Future Payments at Barclays, creating next-gen customer experiences and partnering with FinTechs. His expertise is in digital payments, growth strategies and product development, grounded in behavioural trends.
Nick is a thought leader and top-100 financial sector influencer.
Alina Dragomir joined the Post Trading Team at the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in 2014, where she has been involved in the elaboration of the CSDR Level 2 measures, as well as in other regulatory and supervisory convergence measures related to CSDs and settlement. Alina coordinates ESMA’s activities related to TARGET2-Securities (T2S). She also coordinates ESMA’s work on the implementation of the DLT Pilot Regime in the EU.
Prior to this, Alina worked for the Romanian Financial Supervisory Authority for 7 years, where she followed post trading issues. In this capacity, she took part in the Council negotiations of EMIR and CSDR. She also contributed to the
work of European Commission expert groups, as well as CESR and then ESMA post trading expert committees.
She holds an MSc in Economics from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. Alina has extensive experience and expertise in EU policy and regulation covering CSDs and securities settlement.
Olga Jordão is the CEO of Euronext Securities Porto and the Head of Client Service of Euronext Securities, the unified network of Euronext CSDs.
While ensuring a continued strong presence of the Central Securities Depository in Portugal, Olga also oversees the pan-European client service teams to deliver service excellence to local and international clients.
Olga joined Euronext at a pivotal moment in 2021, when the group that operates the third largest CSD network in Europe combined its four CSDs into a new umbrella brand and launched its “Growth for Impact 2024” strategy. She has close to 30 years of professional experience in the post-trade sector and has held multiple roles in Luxembourg and in France heading up middle and back-office operations at a major global custodian, serving sophisticated global asset managers and leading strategic transformation projects. Olga is the former branch manager of State Street Bank International, Paris and also has vast experience in key account management, leading global teams and driving cross-functional initiatives.
Olga is a keen supporter of diversity, inclusion and sustainability initiatives. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Foreign Languages (English & German) from the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne and an Executive Masters of Business Administration from TRIUM (HEC, NYU, LSE).
Jennifer Robertson joined the European Commission in 2004 and has worked in DG Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union since 2005. She is currently a Head of Unit in the unit responsible for financial markets infrastructure. Previously she worked on retail financial services issues and SME finance in various departments of the European Commission.
Before working at the Commission, she worked as a senior economist for 5 years at the European Savings Banks Group on issues ranging from the introduction of the euro to the integration of European financial services markets. Her professional experience also includes working as an economic researcher for a financial communications consultancy in Washington DC, USA.
She is a graduate of the University of Glasgow (UK) and received a Master degree in International Economics and European Studies at the School for Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University (Italy and USA).
Andrea Gentilini has been Head of Financial Market Infrastructures
division of the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) since February 2017. He is also ESMA Internal Coordinator within the CSSF and represents the CSSF in several ESMA Standing Committees (MSC, SSF Market, RSC, DSC). Since March 2023, he has been appointed Chair of the ESMA Post Trading Working Group and co-Chair of the T2S Cooperative Arrangement.
Andrea Gentilini has been Chair of the CEMA EMIR Task Force, responsible for the development of EMIR risk indicators, to promote data driven supervision and supervisory convergence, as well as knowledge sharing and peer learning.
Andrea Gentilini joined the CSSF in 2014 and has been working in the Financial Market Infrastructure Division ever since, contributing to the development of the CSSF’s authorisation process for CSDs under CSDR and support the work of the CSSF in the policy activity related to CSDR, EMIR and SFTR. Before joining the CSSF in 2014, he worked 15 years in the financial sector in Luxembourg (Senior Manager at PwC Luxembourg, portfolio manager in a Luxembourg based management company) and in China (head of international business in a Chinese fund management company, based in Shenzhen).
Andrea Gentilini was born in Milan, Italy and studied economics at Bocconi University, where he obtained also a Master’s degree in economics.
Andrea is married with 1 child. He holds Italian and Luxembourgish nationality
Jesus Benito is Head Domestic Custody & TR Operations, SIX.
He was involved in the European CSD Association (ECSDA) as member of its Board of Directors and Executive Committee. Nowadays, He is the T2S CSD Steering Group (“CSG”) Chairman from its inception in 2012.
Jesús Benito has participated in numerous international Groups, among others: the European Commission’s Clearing and Settlement Advisory and Monitoring Expert Group (CESAME and CESAMEII), Monitoring Operating Group (MOG), etc.
Before joining Iberclear in 2000, he worked for Banco de España from 1988 to 2000, as Head of Section responsible for CSD links and securities settlement policy issues.
He has a Business Degree from Complutense University.
Ilse Peeters, Director, is the Head of Government Relations and Public Affairs at Euroclear SA/NV. Government Relations was part of the Euroclear Corporate Strategy Division until 2017. It is now part of the Compliance, Regulatory Management and Public Affairs Division.
Ms Peeters works closely with key EU public policy stakeholders on relevant industry issues, while ensuring the effective external communication of Euroclear’s strategy. Over the last ten years, she has been involved in the main regulatory initiatives that have shaped the post-trade industry. Her recent focus is on technological innovations such as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and ICOs and their regulatory and legal challenges.
Attila Toth is working for EBRD as Principal in the Capital & Financial Market Development Team since 2018. He is specialized in equity capital market and capital market infrastructure development where he built up a 20-year experience. He started his career at the Hungarian Debt Management Agency in 1997 and joined the Budapest Stock Exchange in late 1999. During his 16-year career at the BSE he was responsible for business and product development, trading and post-trading. Between 2008 and 2016 he was the Deputy CEO of the stock exchange responsible for issuer and trading member relations, product development, trading and business strategy. He was chairman of the Supervisory Board and also the member of the Board of Directors of the Central Depository and Clearing House of Hungary. He took part in international capital market development projects and spent years in the corporate finance and private equity industry specialised for SMEs before joining the EBRD.
Attila is highly devoted to the improvement of financial literacy. He was the Chief Secretary of the Foundation for Financial Self-Awareness, an institution founded by the Budapest Stock Exchange and later the member of the Board of the Money Compass Foundation of the National Bank of Hungary. Attila Toth has a Master Degree in Finance from the Budapest Corvinus University and has a EFFAS/ACIIA International Programme of Investment Analysis Diploma.
Mr. Kong Qingwen is the Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation Limited (CSDC). He has worked in Shanghai Stock Exchange and CSDC starting from 1994, and worked as Deputy Director and Director of CSDC’s Registration and Depository Department starting from 2002.
In 2010, he was appointed a member of the preparatory group of China Securities Finance Corporation (CSF), one of CSRC’s programs, and then served as the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of CSF from 2012. He then served as a Board Member and Deputy Chief Executive Officer of CSDC from 2015.
Mr. Kong holds a Master of Science degree.
The difference in efficiency between single and multi-currency/CSD/timezone markets
Alina Dragomir joined the Post Trading Team at the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in 2014, where she has been involved in the elaboration of the CSDR Level 2 measures, as well as in other regulatory and supervisory convergence measures related to CSDs and settlement. Alina coordinates ESMA’s activities related to TARGET2-Securities (T2S). She also coordinates ESMA’s work on the implementation of the DLT Pilot Regime in the EU.
Prior to this, Alina worked for the Romanian Financial Supervisory Authority for 7 years, where she followed post trading issues. In this capacity, she took part in the Council negotiations of EMIR and CSDR. She also contributed to the
work of European Commission expert groups, as well as CESR and then ESMA post trading expert committees.
She holds an MSc in Economics from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. Alina has extensive experience and expertise in EU policy and regulation covering CSDs and securities settlement.
Michele Hillery is General Manager of Equity Clearing and DTC Settlement Service at The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). In this role, Michele has direct responsibility for the day-to-day management of equity clearing for trades executed on the major U.S. exchanges and other equity trading venues. She also oversees our ongoing efforts to collaborate with and build industry support for modernizing and transforming DTCC’s core businesses.
Michele has over 20 years in the industry and has held various positions within Product Management, Quality Assurance and Operations. Prior to joining DTCC’s Equity Clearing Product Management in 2013, Michele led the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation’s Mortgage Backed Securities Division (MBSD) where she managed the operations of the business and had responsibility over project development.
She earned a BBS from University of Limerick, Ireland and a MS from New York University.
Charlie Geffen was appointed by the UK Government as Chair of the Accelerated Settlement Taskforce in December 2022.
The Taskforce was established to examine the case for moving the UK to a T+1 settlement cycle and the basis on which this could be implemented.
Charlie was previously the Senior Partner at the international law firm Ashurst and led the Corporate practice of US law firm Gibson Dunn in London. His legal practice focused on corporate finance and M&A.
Since then he has served on a number of corporate boards in the financial services and energy sectors and is a Senior Adviser at the consultancy Flint Global.
He also serves as Chair of Council at the University of Surrey and on the boards of a number of other not for profit organisations.
Jesús Sánchez is Head of Settlement Services, SIX.
He has over 30 years in the industry in different positions, but mainly in the areas of Settlement and Custody.
He chairs the Settlement Working Group of the European Central Securities Depositories Association (ECSDA), where the ECSDA CSDR Penalties Framework was agreed and with settlement efficiency being one of the key issues, and the Market Settlement Efficiency (MSE) workshop of T2S, where relevant issues regarding efficiency are assessed and support further discussions in national communities. He is also member of various market committees and expert groups at national and international level such as the T2S CSDs Steering Group (CSG), the Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo), the Spanish National Stakeholder Group (NSG).
Prior to joining Iberclear in 2006, he worked at Citibank for 14 years, being the head of respective Equities and Fixed Income Settlement departments.
He has a degree in Economics and Business by Universidad Autónoma of Madrid and an Executive Master of Business Administration.
Miguel Espinoza is the Head of Product for Montran’s CSD solution and the Solution Delivery Manager of the Securities and Trading division. He has been actively involved in the development and implementation of over 25 Central Securities Depositories around the world. Coming from an IT background, Miguel has been combining his technical and business knowledge to provide Montran
clients with the best possible CSD solution adopting best practices and focusing on settlement optimization and efficiency.
As head of product, Miguel is responsible for the general development and the definition of the product roadmap of the Montran CSD solution. With his team, he is constantly reviewing and researching the implemented processes, new initiatives, and emerging technologies to determine possible enhancements and the way forward for Montran’s CSD product
James is a Senior Advisor within BNY Mellon’s Public Policy and Government Affairs department. His main areas of responsibility are European regulatory and self-regulatory initiatives relating to capital markets, market infrastructure, and post-trade services.
In recent years, he has also focused on digital-related initiatives, such as the DLT Pilot Regime, the Regulation on Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA), and central bank digital currency.
He is a member of several regulatory contact groups, including the European Central Bank’s Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo), and the Consultative Working Group of the ESMA Post Trading Standing Committee. He is co-chair of the AMI-SeCo Corporate Events Group.
He is also a member of numerous industry association working groups, chairs the AFME working group on MiCA, and is co-chair of the AFME Post Trade Executive Committee.
Jean-Paul Lambotte is product manager at Euroclear, in charge of the communication channels. He has a large experience in messaging standards (ISO15022, ISO2022) gathered during more than 20 years working for multiple financial institutions, including several (I)CSDs.
He is member of the SMPG (Securities Market Practice Group) where he represents the Eurobonds (XS) market since 2018. Thanks to its involvement in important market initiatives such as T2S, SRDII, SCoRE standards, CPBR+, Mr Lambotte has built a transversal view on current trends regarding ISO standards evolutions. He is currently chairing the ECSDA Messaging Task-Force.
Jean-Paul has a degree of Civil Engineer in Computer Sciences and a Master in Financial Risks Management from UCLouvain.
Charifa El Otmani is part of the Capital Markets Strategy team at Swift, responsible for defining and driving the company vision for Securities and FX. During 17 years at Swift, Charifa has held a variety of roles, working on securities market infrastructure initiatives with the Eurosystem, DTCC and others and more recently, as Head of Global Payments Innovation (gpi) EMEA, leading efforts to establish a new norm for cross-border payments. Prior to Swift, she worked at The Bank of New York Mellon, in the Custody business, before moving to Accenture and BNP Paribas. Charifa holds a Master degree in Financial Markets, specialised in the management of post-trade operations.