As the current Head of Trading, Americas, at JP Morgan Asset Management, which is responsible for $1.7 trillion AUM, Curt is regarded as an industry pioneer in utilizing data and real time analytics to derive trade scheduling and trade destinations. He is on the Luminex board and will be discussing how this efficient way to source block liquidity will lower client transaction costs and put investors first on the Keynote Panel on Day 1 of the Equities Leaders Summit.

Matt Lyons is the Global Trading Manager at Capital Group, which has AUM exceeding $1.35 trillion. Matt is responsible for Capital Group’s global equity trading operations; managing 12 associates across all regions, including equity traders, regional managers, quantitative execution group and research relationship group. He has recently successfully:
- Executed a global CSA program
- Implemented a new proprietary order management system
- Optimized TCA data 
- Capitalized on buy-side to buy-side trading ventures to tackle his biggest challenge of sourcing liquidity
Matt will be sharing his insights on the keynote panel on buy side to buys side trading, and how he has leveraged TCA data to improve trader behavior at the Equities Leaders Summit

Patrick is Vice President of Equity Portfolio Management Technology at Fidelity ($289.6 billion AUM) with over 16 years experience and a proven track record of leading teams to design and deliver complex trading solutions. He has a unique ability to understand the needs of clients and conceptualize solutions for a wide variety of portfolio management, trading strategies, and business models. Patrick will apply his expertise on the panel discussion on how to foster a closer partnership between portfolio management and execution to help you capitalize on new alpha generation opportunities.

Rick is responsible for the implementation of technology for use by the Global trading desk at Franklin Templeton, which currently holds $854.7 billion AUM. He has recently completed an Investment Dashboard, integrating all relevant internal investment information for use across the front office. Rick has recently turned his focus to identifying and capturing alpha opportunities as they arise in the context of fluctuating market conditions; expanding the use of quantitative analytics and integrating them more deeply into the investment process, ultimately equipping traders with the skill sets they need to improve their trading performance. Rick will be sharing his insights into the key skills you should be equipping your traders with to excel in the new trading landscape.

Patrick has 25 years of investment industry experience, currently Head of Trading at ClearBridge Investments ($116.8 billion AUM). He leads a team of traders operating from a global multiple asset class platform. The desk supports portfolio management teams located in New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Wilmington requiring constant contact with portfolio managers and analysts in order to achieve best execution. Patrick will be sharing his expertise of managing the global multi-asset trading team, and maintaining the strong relationship from portfolio construction to execution in the exclusive multi-asset trading boardroom at the Equities Leaders Summit.

Jeff is the Director of Global Equity trading at MFS Investment Management, who are responsible for $445.8 billion AUM. He is an industry pioneer well respected in the equity markets. He is also involved with buy side owned dark pool, Luminex, for which he is a board member. He is working alongside some of the greatest money managers in the world to create a self-sustaining, fully transparent trading venue for large peer-to-peer block orders, to help the buy side preserve as much alpha as possible. Jeff will be sharing his thoughts on this efficient way to help you source block liquidity in the keynote panel on Day 1.

Prior to joining Luminex Trading & Analytics LLC, Jonathan was the Managing Director, Co–Head of Equity Trading – Americas at BlackRock, Inc. He was responsible for all aspects of trade execution, including broker selection and monitoring. Jonathan’s service with BlackRock dates back to 1999, including his years with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM), before the merger with BlackRock in 2006. He is now applying his years of experience to leading the industry into a new era of buy side to buy side trading at widely anticipated buy side dark pool, Luminex. Jonathan will be sharing his thoughts and vision for the future of equity trading on the keynote panel on day 1.

Eric Pollackov is the Managing Director of ETF Capital Markets and Client Portfolio Strategist for Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. where he is responsible for assisting the multiple sales channels within Schwab around such topics as the ETF landscape and market structure concerns. Additionally, his team manages the relationships with the market-making community, U.S. Exchanges, and Authorized Participants for the Schwab ETFs as well as evaluation of the overall soundness of primary and secondary market transactions. Prior to joining Schwab, Eric was a Managing Director of Exchange-Traded Products at NYSE Euronext, where he was responsible for guiding ETF issuers through the listing process on NYSE Arca as well as managing the trading community relationships while helping develop the Lead Market Maker program. Preceding his role with NYSE Euronext, he was a derivatives trader for Susquehanna International Group for nine years. Eric holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from The State University of New York at Buffalo and holds Series 7 and 24 licenses. Additionally he has been published frequently in print media and has also done multiple industry radio, on-line, and television programs.

Stuart George is responsible for managing all aspects of the Delaware Investment’s equity trading desk, and he is a member of the firm’s commission and soft-dollar committees. As part of the Macquarie Funds they are responsible for over $180 billion AUM. Stuart is also a member of the Nasdaq Traders Council. He currently trades small, mid and large capitalization growth and value stocks, while maintaining his management duties as head trader. He has recently been able to lower average commission rates to the lowest in Delaware’s history, managed the transition to a new OMS system, reimaged the soft dollar program into a fully functional CSA platform, and established a relationship with a commission aggregator. Stuart is focusing on understanding and adjusting to market structure changes, often writing articles on the topic, while preparing for MIFID II. Stuart’s intriguing perspective will provide a holistic  approach to considering various fragmentation concerns. Stuart will consider if it is possible that the US equity trading market be consolidated without eliminating competition, stifling innovation, raising transaction costs, and producing subpar performance.

Gordon is a client portfolio manager for the US equity group, covering the international, global, large-, mid- and small-cap teams. In this role he works with portfolio managers to develop and communicate information about each investment teams’ strategy and process to clients. Gordon is responsible for the analysis and issuance of Nuveen’s capital market predictions, and will be exclusively revealing his predictions for the Equities market in 2016 in comparison to other asset classes at the Equities Leaders Summit on Day 1. 

Since joining the Alliance Bernstein trading team in 1993, Frank has led or co-led various equity trading desks and held numerous senior level trading roles within the firm.  As Global Co-Head of Equity Trading at Alliance Bernstein, which holds $474 billion AUM, Frank has recently been involved in overseeing all EMEA equity trading. He will be lending his expertise on day two’s panel to equip the trading function to take more control of order flow and improve your firm’s overall profitability.

William Lishman is Head of Equity Trading for the Americas. His current trading focus is on Latin American equity, US and Canadian Energy, Materials, and Chemical trades. He joined Schroders in June 1996 trading Latin American equities and from 2000 ran the US and LatAm trading desk out of London. In February 2003, William moved to New York as Schroders regionalized the firm’s trading capabilities. He continued to trade Latin American equities and derivatives, as well as those in the US and Canada. In 2010, William was named Head of Equity Trading Americas. Prior to joining Schroders, William was a Trader at Quorum Capital Management trading equities, bonds, derivatives, and FX.

Kirk Allen is a managing director and head of trading at NWQ Investment Management Company, LLC, a value-oriented global firm which manages over $10 billion in assets.  Prior to joining NWQ in 2002, Kirk held the position of Senior Equity Trader with CapitalWorks Investment Partners where he was in charge of implementing trading strategy for the firm’s traditional Hedge product, as well as a Small-Cap and Mid-Cap Growth product.  Previous to this, he spent three years at Brandes Investment Partners as the Institutional Trading Manager where he was responsible for the firm’s global execution facility with additional oversight of the retail private client, wrap-fee and foreign exchange trading desks.  Before joining Brandes, he was an equity trader with Nicholas|Applegate Capital Management where he performed in both domestic and international equity capacities.  Kirk is a member of the NASDAQ Institutional Traders Advisory Council (ITAC) and a Nuveen representative to the ICI Equity Markets Advisory Committee.   Kirk graduated from San Diego State University with a B.S. in Finance. A native of San Diego, he has 26 years of financial industry experience with 23 years in buy-side trading.

Marc’s global team spans three locations, US, London and Tokyo, providing asset managers with commentary, analysis and trade ideas in fixed income, equities and FX. Marc has an expert level of knowledge on macro-drivers affecting capital markets and subsequent trading strategies and actively advises clients on key challenges within the equities market. Marc will be sharing his insights on afternoon day 1 looking to the possible macro trends, derived from geo-political drivers that affect the buy-side trading desk, helping you plan ahead in an ever changing market. 

As the Director of Equity Trading at The Boston Parteners (RIM), the $32 billion US asset management arm of Robeco Group, Mark Kuzminskas’s responsibilities include overseeing trading desks in Boston and NY; managing the technological and regulatory change as it impacts trading and the investment process; and heading up the Trade Management Oversight Committee which is charged with ensuring that Trading complies with the firm's best execution practices. Mark has spent a significant amount of time working to shrink the sphere of the investment process by dramatically improving the relationship between portfolio management and trading. He has also been looking closely at trader DNA and using data to analyze the corresponding trading behaviour and process. Based on this analysis, he has made significant improvements to the trading performance, and will be sharing this experience on Day 2 at the Equities Leaders Summit.

STRS of Ohio manages $74 billion in assets, which include $19 billion in International equities. They use a wide array of strategies that address all market capitalizations. They trade equities in 63 countries along with the corresponding FX. Scott has been at STRS of Ohio since 1998, running the International desk since 2003. He is currently in the process of implementing TCA on the international desk, something they have had on the domestic desk for a number of years.

Michael has over 18 years in institutional investment experience, 13 of which were at the Employees Retirement System of Texas (ERS) where he is a Chief Trader. Michael is responsible for developed and emerging market executions as well as FX and derivative executions. He also tracks trading patterns and recommends ways to improve trading and asset allocation decisions. Michael will be discussing his vast experience of overlaying derivatives in equities trading during the panel on alternative trading strategies on Day 2 of the Equities Leaders Summit.

As Director of Trading at Brandes Investment Partners, Joe is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the global trading desk and oversees the global trading strategy; including the execution of all institutional and private clients sub-advisory wrap portfolios and program trading. He is most recently looking closely at the impact of unbundling on research and broker-relationships. Joe has 21 years of prior experience on the sell side, and extensive product knowledge in both foreign and domestic equity markets, as well as 12 years of experience managing trading professionals and building positive relationships with institutional clients. His vast experience on the sell side and subsequent move to a prominent position managing a buy side trading desk, gives him a brilliant overview of divergent trader skill sets and best practice management skills.  He will be sharing these understandings about how to prepare for unbundling to streamline your trading costs, so that they  factor in research and execution payments.

Selena joined Eagle Global Advisors in 2007 and is currently the Head Trader responsible for all trading functions for $5B AUM in MLP, ADR, emerging markets, micro cap quant fund and private partnerships.  In her role, she provides leadership to the trading team, oversees workflows and enhances team policies to meet the needs of the firm. She has recently collaborated on a new micro-cap quant strategy and implemented a new OMS system, the process of which she will be sharing on a roundtable on Day 2.  She is currently finding ways to manage the additional trading volume from new products as well as evaluating the need to expand the desk.   Selena has over 18 years of experience in the financial services industry working formerly at Invesco, Enron and Piedra Capital.

Chris is responsible for managing the firm’s trading functions as Director of Trading at River Road Asset Management ($7.5 billion).  He is an expert in his field with over 20 years of securities trading experiences in both buy and sell side institutions. Chris has recently turned his attention to TCA analysis, looking at how to leverage the data in real time. In particular, he is looking at how TCA data can be used to better inform portfolio managers and clients, and what other value can be derived easily and efficiently. He will be sharing his insights on TCA  from the River Road Asset Management small-mid cap perspective in the Day 1 Panel examining how to standardize analysis and leverage your data to overall improve your trading performance.

Joseph R. Sowin, is responsible for Highland Capital’s global equity trading covering listed derivative trading. He has recently created a defined “trading process” that prescribes a set of trading rules and automates order flow where appropriate to improve trading efficiency. He will be sharing these autonomous methods of taking control of order flow alongside Frank Loughlin from Alliance Bernstein and Clive Williams from T.Rowe Price on the Morning of Day 2 at Equities Leaders Summit. Joe is also attending event to help him identify technology that he can adopt in his firm to enhance functional domains in concordance with current systems; in order to optimise the interoperability that takes a major role in such a large firm.

Michael Warlan is responsible for managing the execution and implementation of equityinvestments across all Third Avenue portfolios. His primary responsibilitiesinclude U.S., non-U.S., and emerging market equities, derivatives, andcurrencies. Leading Third Avenue’s Global Trading Desk, he has expanded accessto multiple markets, venues, and strategies, along with the capabilities totrade additional asset classes including currencies and derivatives. His dualrole encompassing both execution and implementation means he is exposed to thebenefits of having a synonymous relationship between portfolio management and trading on a daily basis. Michael will be pinpointing the areas where a close relationship between portfolio management and trading is essential to improve performance on the panel focused on further fostering this relationship.

Prior to joining Chicago Equity Partners as a director of equity trading, Mr. Fares worked in the corporate finance group at Bank of America. Mr. Fares was one of the early adopters of electronic trading and an avid proponent of it long before it became popular.  He has given presentations and participated in debates on the topic at industry conferences, as well as through numerous interviews with the press.  He also advises some of the top electronic brokers and alternative trading systems (ATS) on algorithmic trading design that incorporates state of the art strategies while taking into account the latest market structure changes. He will be applying his expertise to the discussion of proven methods to source small-mid cap liquidity at the Equity Leaders Summit.

Jason Vedder joined Driehaus in 2000. He is responsible for directing the Firm’s domestic and international trading functions, as well as directing the Trading Operations groups. Mr. Vedder received his B.A. degree in Economics from Albion College in 1992. From 1992 to 1998 he was a floor specialist and position trader on the Chicago Stock Exchange, as well as a market maker on the NASDAQ. From 1998 to 2000 he worked as a founding partner of Smart Bandwidth, LLC. During his tenure with Driehaus, Mr. Vedder has held the titles of Domestic Equity Trader, Senior Domestic Equity Trader, Senior Equity Analyst and Manager of Trading prior to assuming his current role in 2014. Mr. Vedder earned his M.B.A. from DePaul University in 2003. He also holds the Chartered Market Technician designation (CMT).

Rob is the Senior Trader at New Amsterdam Partners. He manages the equity trading desk overseeing all brokerage and CSA relationships. He coordinates with compliance, operations and portfolio managers in system upgrades, client on-boarding, transitions and RFP composition. He also presents and communicates trade performance and processes to the management committee and clients. Rob has been in the financial industry for almost 20 years working on both the buy and sell side. Rob will be leading an exclusive roundtable on how to improve trading processes within the SMA and UMA platforms.

Philippe C. Burke, Portfolio Manager, Apache Capital Management. Prior to Apache Capital, Philippe was a Principal and head of Global Leveraged Strategies at Morgan Stanley (1997-98). Philippe joined Morgan from Lehman Brothers where he was an SVP (1991-97) and held the positions of Proprietary Trader, senior Structured Bond Trader, and head of Structured Swaps during his tenure. Philippe has an MSc. In Economics from the London School of Economics, and an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Noma is the founder of Garrett Asset Management, a systematic trading firm that uses technical systems to invest in futures, ETFs, and currencies. His ETF strategies utilize the structural characteristics of the underlying instruments. He is also involved in research on applied decision-making and the application of technology to solve real world problems. Prior to founding Garrett Asset Management, Dr. Noma was a portfolio manager running a fund of hedge funds and was the Chief Risk Officer at Asset Alliance, a seeder of hedge funds. In 2013 Dr. Noma was awarded a patent on a new type of leveraged ETF, and will be sharing his significant expertise on how ETF’s can be leveraged to increase alpha returns.

Peter serves as Director of Institutional Trading at Golden Capital Management ($1.8 billion AUM) to which he has brought his specialized experience in solutions encompassing, workflow integration, pre- and post- trade analytics, as well as customized trading strategies including automated trading. He also helped implement AlphaSimplex Group’s first trading systems, assisted in the quantitative research process, and was responsible for the firm's technology infrastructure, including managing business continuity. Peter has recently turned his vast expertise to GCM’s OMS & EMS technology, and is currently building these systems in house. He will be sharing his insights on system customization vs. building in-house on an exclusive roundtable at the Equities Leaders Summit.

Lori Hoch, J.D. is a Principal of Cortina Asset Management where she has served as the Chief Operating Officer since its inception in 2004 Cortina now operates with a $2.9 billion AUM small cap. Lori is also Cortina’s Chief Compliance Officer. With the significant growth of Cortina Asset Management in recent years, Lori has turned her attention to TCA and how to use this data to achieve best execution. Lori will show you how to standardize analysis and leverage data to improve trading performance by sharing her best practice on TCA which will unlock its full potential.

Michael Mollemans heads up Pavilion Global Markets’ Asia Pacific sales trading desk and has worked in the algorithmic trading space for 12 years. Previously, he was at Credit Suisse Securities Japan as Head of Electronic Trading. Prior to that, he worked at Daiwa Capital Markets America in New York as Head of Electronic Trading Sales, and at Credit Lyonnais Securities in Tokyo in Electronic Trading Sales. Michael has a PhD in Econometrics from Macquarie University, is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and a Chartered Market Technician (CMT).

Denise Shull, a thought leader in neurofinance, founded The ReThink Group in 2003 in order to solve the vexing problem of human misperception of risk. Shull has taught thousands of Wall Street professionals how to avoid their typical behavioral responses to fear and greed. Her trading career began with equities in 1994 “upstairs” at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Later she traded futures as a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and it was then that she began transforming neuroeconomics -the new science of the brain on risk- into investing profits. An engaging speaker, Shull has received rave reviews for her talks “How Risk Psychology is Fractal” and “Emotions as Key Data”. Denise is sharing her extensive understanding of how we respond to risk, in the session “Intuiting markets and differentiating risks – The X factors in great trading.”

Adam Golla is instrumental in the development and customization of AlphaVision® for the Buy Side. Adam consults with execution, risk, and compliance desks to determine client requirements related to interfacing with order and execution data. Focusing on the challenges of TCA, liquidity, and benchmarking data, he collaborates with client teams to engineer visual solutions that add value. Prior to joining Aqumin, Adam spent 10 years as a derivatives trader with a proprietary firm and as an independent market maker. In these roles, he created trading and risk strategies based on fundamental and technical research and executed those strategies across a broad spectrum of futures contracts in hard and soft commodity, energy, fixed income, and equity markets. Adam draws from his capital market experience to apply technical solutions to common issues faced by firms in trading environments.

As Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PDQ Enterprises LLC, Mr. Ross brings more than thirty five years of experience in the securities industry to PDQ. Prior to joining PDQ as CEO in 2006, Mr. Ross was the CEO of Getco from 2002-2005. During his tenure at Getco, he expanded the firm’s trading from equities to fixed income and foreign exchange. Mr. Ross’ experiences have included floor trading, off-floor trading, risk arbitrage, options, futures and cash markets. Mr. Ross began his career as an options analyst and subsequently became a member of the American Stock Exchange and a registered options trader on the floor of the exchange. In 1983, Mr. Ross formed Ceres Partners, which was a small trading firm specializing in risk arbitrage and options market making. In 1988, Mr. Ross became a member of the CBOE and was a market maker until 1999.

Daniel Ciment is a Managing Director and Head of Americas Equities Execution Services at J.P. Morgan. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan in 2010, Daniel held similar roles at Barclays Capital, Lehman Brothers and ITG. Daniel holds a B.S. in finance from Yeshiva University.

Following a range of roles in Software Development, Dealing Room Support and Project management starting in 1988, Mauricio founded BCC Group back in 2003. From 2007 he focused the company on developing a vendor agnostic Market Data Messaging Platform based on Solace Systems Appliances together with investment banks. After 4 years of testing and redesign with joint forces from Solace Systems and Tier 1 Investment Banks BCC Group released FMDP which, as a result got certified by Bloomberg for connection to their data.

Matt Rowley holds the position of Chief Technology Officer at WallachBeth Capital, a leading provider of institutional execution services. Matt focuses on developing and integrating advanced scientific and technological innovations to solve the buy-side’s most challenging problems. He is responsible for product management, quantitative design, advanced analytics, execution algorithms, and engages in deep collaborative consultancy projects with the buy-side community. With nearly two decades of financial experience, Matt has developed some of the most innovative technology platforms in the industry. He began his career at First Chicago Bank as a Quantitative Analyst in the Strategic Risk Management Advisory group. While at First Chicago, Matt developed systematic trading algorithms and high/low frequency data analytics. In 2000, Matt left First Chicago to join financial software vendor Fidessa, where he served as Global Head of Advanced Trading Products. At Fidessa, Matt was a lead architect on BlueBox, the firm’s algorithmic trading system. Most recently, Matt was Head of Alternative Execution at Credit Agricole Cheuvreux and led the quantitative trading team for the Americas. Matt has been published in numerous publications including the Journal of Finance.

Gregg Berman was a Principal at EY in its Financial Services Organization focusing on Advisory Services for banks, broker-dealers, asset managers, hedge funds, market exchanges and venues, and other financial service providers. Prior to joining EY in 2015, Mr. Berman spent 5+ years at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, DC, where he established and was Associate Director of the Office of Analytics and Research in the Division of Trading and Markets. Mr. Berman covered a wide array of areas including equity market structure, clearing-house risk, derivatives transparency, and broker-dealer capital. Before joining the Division of Trading and Markets, Mr. Berman was co-deputy director of the Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation. Previously (through 2009) Mr. Berman served as the head the risk business of New York-based RiskMetrics Group. In that capacity he was responsible for all institutional and wealth management offerings that serve Hedge Funds, Asset Managers, Prime Brokers, Banks, Financial Advisors, Insurance Companies, and Corporates. Mr. Berman joined RiskMetrics as a founding member during the time of its spin-off from J.P. Morgan in 1998 and had held a number of roles from research to head of product management, market risk, and of business management. Before joining RiskMetrics Group, Mr. Berman co-managed a number of multi-asset Hedge Funds within New York-based ED&F Man. His start in the Hedge Fund space began in 1993, researching and developing multi-asset trading strategies as part of Mint Investment Management Corporation, a $1bn CTA based in New Jersey.

Vlad advises clients and internal groups on market structure issues and focuses extensively on UBS's electronic strategy, particularly on exchange and alternative venue analysis, as well as order routing decisions. He is a member of several industry committees on equity markets and electronic trading, including the NYSE Market Structure Advisory Committee, SIFMA Equity Markets & Trading Committee, and STA Trading Issues Equities Committee, and sits on the boards of BIDS Trading LP and Chi-X Global LLC. He joined UBS in 2011 from Liquidnet where he was Global Co-Head of Corporate Strategy, responsible for business development, market structure, and government relations. Vlad also holds a BA in Economics and a BS in Political Science from Rutgers University – Rutgers College. He was ranked the rising star of finance in 2011 in Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 list.

Joe Mecane is a Managing Director in Equities Electronic Trading. Based in New York, he is responsible for the development of the firm’s electronic product offering, with a particular focus on the equities and credit markets. He is a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently formed Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee, a Member of the FINRA Board of Governors, and serves on the Board of Directors of BIDS Trading. Previously, Mr. Mecane was an Executive Vice President and Head of US Equities for New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at IntercontinentalExchange Group. He joined NYSE in 2008, having previously worked for four years at UBS Investment Bank as a Managing Director in the Equities business. Mr. Mecane has an MBA from The Wharton School of Business and is a Certified Public Accountant. He is married with three children and resides in Rye, New York.

As CEO of Instinet Incorporated, Jonathan Kellner is responsible for managing the firm's brokerage operations globally. Prior to being named CEO, Mr. Kellner served as Head of Instinet’s Americas businesses. He joined the Nomura Group in 2003 and moved to Instinet in 2007 following its acquisition of the company. Mr. Kellner previously held senior trading and technology positions at Charles Schwab, Investment Technology Group and Morgan Stanley.

Dave is a technologist and trading expert who is routinely asked to provide views to regulators, members of Congress, and the press. Dave has designed and built the infrastructure that underpins several modern electronic trading systems and previously worked as a quantitative analyst and trader on high-frequency trading desks. Dave is Co-Founder & CTO of KOR Group LLC, where he specializes in market structure and technology. Dave's current work focuses on scalable technology, predictive analytics, complex systems design and consultation for organizations working to better understand and navigate modern equity markets. Dave sits on several for-profit and non-profit boards, including as Independent Director for Aequitas.