Speakers 2008

James Stewart
Head of Research
Weavering Capital

A postgraduate of the University of Edinburgh in 1979, he then held research and senior lecturing positions at both the University of Edinburgh and the Scottish Universities Business School. He moved into financial markets working as Senior Economist at Daiwa Securities Research, London between 1989 and 1992. In 1993 he was appointed Chief Economist at the Swedish investment bank, SEB London where his main roles were to provide research for the Bank’s global client base and to be the principal economic advisor to the Proprietary Trading team, which was headed by Magnus Peterson. He has been Chief Economist at Weavering Capital since inception in 1998 providing expert macro-economic research and analysis. He receives much coverage in the media for his macro-economic research and greatly respected views and this is reflected by the numerous appearances on CNBC, CNN, BBC and newspaper interviews that he is invited to give.

Guy Fraser-Sampson
Author of Multi Asset Class Investment Strategy
Cass Business School

Guy Fraser-Sampson has over twenty years’ investment experience around the world, including a spell living and working in the Middle East as Investment Controller with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (“ADIA”). He is a particular expert in the field of private equity, having set up and run for several years the non-US operations of Horsley Bridge, the leading fund of funds manager.

Guy is a well-known keynote speaker on the conference circuit and has written extensively for investment publications around the world. He is the author of two books, both of which went into the Amazon best-seller list in their first few weeks of publication. Multi Asset Class Investment Strategy shows how and why investors around the world (particularly pension funds) should be embracing the Yale Model. Private Equity as an asset class is, perhaps surprisingly, the only textbook in the world on this fascinating area and is being eagerly adopted by investors, practitioners and business school students alike.

Alexander Flatscher
Managing Director
Good Investments

Managing director at Good Investments Co., Ltd., previously represented GovernanceMetrics International (GMI), an independent global ratings and research agency specializing in the research of corporate governance practices at listed companies, in Japan. Before that, while at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Securities in Tokyo and at Dresdner Bank in Frankfurt, he advised Japanese institutional investors on non-Japanese equity investments. He graduated with an MBA from Keio Business School in Japan and has been a CFA charterholder since 1998. Mr. Flatscher is also the author of "Kooporeto Gabanansu No Hyoka Ni Motoduita Toshi No Susume - Meigara Sentaku No Shin Choryu" (Toyo Keizai Shinposha, October 2006) (English subtitle: "Reducing Risk - The Importance of Corporate Governance")

Kenzo Matsumura
Chief Executive Officer
Privee Fund Group Co. Ltd

Member of the Committee on Finance and Capital Market of Keizai Doyukai Japan Association of Corporate Executives). Visiting Professor of Graduate School of Law and Politics, Osaka University. Founded Privee Zurich Securities Co., Ltd. in 1997, prior to funding the group, he headed Risk Arbitrage Division, Smith Barney Securities Japan. Earned B.A. in Law from Seikei University.

Mats Sjostrom
Regional Director - Asia
Altis Partners

Mr. Mats Sjöström joined Altis Partners in 2006 as Regional Director for Asia. Based in Hong Kong, Mr. Sjöström is responsible for client relations and business development in the Asia Pacific region. From 2003 - 2005, Mr Sjöström was Regional Director for Estlander & Rönnlund, responsible for business development in Asia and the Middle East. Mr. Sjöström has worked in the hedge fund industry since 1999 in various trading, portfolio management and product development roles. Mats Sjöström holds a Masters degree in Finance.

Lou Gerken
Chief Investment Officer
Gerken Capital & Associates

Louis C. Gerken, Founder, Chairman and Group CIO of Gerken Capital Associates (“GCA”) has been active in the alternative investment business since the mid 70’s. He started his career as an Analyst and Portfolio Manager with London-based, GT Capital, one of the earliest emerging market fund managers. GCA’s primary focus is the management of alternative asset, emerging market funds. At present, aggregate AUM managed and/or advised exceeds $1.4 billion. Details on current and prior funds managed can be accessed at www.gerkencapital.com. GCA and its Principals have managed and/or advised $4.9 billion in private equity and hedge funds representing 20 different managers.

Matthew Hoffman
Chief Investment Officer
Weston Capital Management

Matthew T. Hoffman is the Chief Investment Officer at Weston Capital Management LLC, a global investment manager with $2.6bn in assets under management, with offices in New York, London, Palm Beach and Connecticut. Mr. Hoffman is responsible for overseeing the firm’s investment activities, focusing on identifying emerging managers of quality and potential, evaluating specialized strategies, seeding promising new talent, and building portfolios around them. Mr. Hoffman has over 25 years of experience in global investment markets serving in various executive and management roles for firms in the US, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Immediately prior to joining Weston, Mr. Hoffman was a founding partner and Chief Investment Officer for Mayer & Hoffman Capital Advisors, LLC. Mr. Hoffman has held senior management positions in asset management and trading at Credit Suisse, UBS, Merrill Lynch and Chase. Mr. Hoffman holds Bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics & Economics and an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago.

Kiyoshi Kohsaka
Vice president
Japan Alternative Investment

Kiyoshi Kohsaka is a vice president of Japan Alternative Investment Co.,Ltd. (100% owned by Mitsui & Co., Ltd.). Prior to joining Japan Alternative Investment in September 2007, he has spent 3 years in Axes Investment Management as a fund manager for Japanese equity long short fund, he has also spent 3 years in JP Morgan Asset Management as a vice president. He has also spent 2 years in Schroder Investment Management. Before joining Schroder, he has worked for Toho Mutual Life Insurance Company for 16 years. During his time with Toho Mutual he has served as an equity fund manager in Tokyo and London. He has over 19 year’s investment experience. He is a Chartered Member of the Security Analysts Association of Japan and a Certified International Investment Analyst.

Peter Hart
Investment Director
Valu-Trac Investments

Peter joined Valu-Trac in 1986 as a research analyst. He left in 1990 to live in Japan for two years where he learned to speak Japanese. He then worked for Nomura Securities as a Researcher (1993-1994) and Sumitomo Bank Capital Markets as a Senior Credit Analyst (1994-1999), before rejoining Valu-Trac in 1999. He graduated from Manchester University (BSc Honours, Mathematics) in 1985.

Alan Liu
Managing Director - Alternative Investments Group
Ajia Partners

Alan has over 23 years experience in the financial industry. Prior to joining Ajia Partners, he was Managing Director of Sales at HFR Asset Management Hong Kong office. Before HFR, he held senior marketing positions at HSBC Investments, GAM and Barclays Bank. He holds a Bachelor of Economics degree from Macquarie University and a Master of Business Administration degree from University of New South Wales in Australia. He is also a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia.

At Ajia Partners, he will be responsible for all sales and marketing activities for the Alternative Investments Group.

Hirofumi Yoshida
Pension Fund Advisor
Pension Fund of the Asahi Shimbun

Managing Director of Asahi-Shimbun Pension Fund,2002-2007, Director for talented person center of Asahi-Shimbun, Staff Writer of Asahi-Shimbun news paper, Tokyo University graduation

Yumiko Manchu
Research Group
CELENT Japan

Yumiko Manchu is an analyst in Celent's Asia Research group and is based in Tokyo. Ms. Manchu's experience is in the financial services industry in Japan, including security solutions, data management, mobile technology, and strategic planning, as well as open systems architectures. Prior to joining Celent, Ms. Manchu worked at Itochu Techno-Science Corporation (CTC). At CTC she was instrumental in strategic planning and marketing for the firm's security solutions. Prior to that, Ms. Manchu was involved in systems planning for CTC's Financial Systems Group. She has also worked on designing solution sets for mobile technology, data integration, CRM, knowledge management, and e-learning.

Ms. Manchu is certified in The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF 8). She received her BA from Tsuda College. She is fluent in Japanese and English.

Darrel Whitten
Director
The IR Corporation

Darrel Whitten, editor and publisher of The Japan Investor, has lived and worked in Japan for the past 31 years. A native of California, he began his Japan career as an investment analyst for Nomura Securities at their Nihonbashi Headquarters. He has been director and managing director of Japanese investment research for three major investment banks-Prudential Securities, Lehman Brothers and ABN AMRO Securities. Darrel has been providing investors with value-added research on Japanese financial markets for over 20 years. With the advent of the World Wide Web, he founded the award-winning Asian Business Watch in 1993 when there was a dearth of internet sites that covered Japan and Asian financial markets.

Paul Warren
CEO & CIO
Investor Select Advisors

Mr. Warren serves as a member of the Board of Directors as well as a CEO and CIO for ISA He is responsible for overseeing the company’s investment management business .Additionally, he is the Lead Portfolio Manager for the ISA First Light Fund, a multistrategy Asia ex-Japan Fund, and the Co-Portfolio Manager for the ISA Ichibanboshi Fund. Mr. Warren has over twenty years of portfolio management experience, 15 years of which have been in Asia. His career began with Morgan Grenfell Asset Management in 1982 where he was the senior Japanese portfolio manager, responsible for all Japanese equity investments. He then joined Salomon Brothers to develop their Japanese equity business in Tokyo and eventually was responsible for all Japanese equity sales in the Asia Pacific region. From 1992 to 1997, Mr. Warren worked in Hong Kong where he headed Japanese equity investments for Rothschild Asset Management and then founded and ran Pilgrim Baxter Asia which was later acquired by American Express. Most recently, Mr. Warren was Chief Investment Officer at Putnam Investments in Boston, where he was responsible for managing a number of flagship funds. During his seven year tenure with Putnam, he was the Chief Investment Officer of the Global Equity, U.S. Core and Core Growth Strategies and was responsible for US$30 billion of assets. He was also responsible for the initial launch of the Global Core product and was instrumental in the design of the process and build-out of the Global Team at Putnam. Mr. Warren’s Putnam Global Equity Fund was named Mutual Fund Magazine’s “Best in Class” in January 2002. It was received a 5-Star rating by Morningstar in 2001. Mr. Warren holds a Bachelors Degree in Economics and a Masters Degree (CANTAB) from Cambridge University.

Akira Kama
Head of Portfolio Management
Orix Investment Corporation

As a Senior Manager in the Investment Management department, Akira serves as the Portfolio Manager and heads the Analyst Team. He has over 10 years of investment experience and has responsibility for HF managers selection and overall portfolio management in ORIX Investment Corporation (OIC). OIC was founded in June 1999 as a HF forcused investment firm in order to make use of the empirical investment approach which was cultivated in the period of a joint-venture company with formerly known as Commodities Corporation. Prior to joining OIC in 2005, he was at Sumitomo Life Insurance Company from 1993-2005. During most of his time at Sumitomo, he worked for the Investment department specialized in Currencies and Fixed Income trading including structured products. He recieved an M.B.A. from International University of Japan in 1999 with a concentration in Finance as a full sponsored student. He is a CMA holder.

Christian Stauffer
Director
EuroFin Investments

Christian Stauffer is a finance expert in emerging markets and in particular in Asia. He has been permanently living in Asia for 10 years and is now running EuroFin Asia, an Asian based (Singapore and Hong Kong) operation advising local and international customers on Structured Trade and Commodity Finance. As a former Director of Noble Trade Finance Limited, the Structured Trade and Commodity Finance vehicle of Noble Group Limited based in Hong Kong, he was instrumental to the establishment of its global business. Before Noble he was the head of FINCO Asia, the merchant banking department of Andre Group in Asia-Pacific, based in Beijing and Singapore. He has more than 15 years of experience in trade, projects and financial products.

Christian Stauffer graduated with a Masters Degree in Engineering from the Swiss Institute of Technology. He was President of the Swiss Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and a board member of the Asian Pacific Countertrade Association in Singapore.

Mr Amitabh Singh
Director
Amrit Capital

Amitabh Singhi is a director at Amrit Capital. Amrit Capital advises Amrit India Value Fund which has a long-only, absolute return focus and holds a concentrated portfolio of securities of Indian companies. Amitabh has an audited track record of 7 years in the Indian securities markets as a portfolio manager of an India based portfolio management and investment advisory company based in India. Prior to this, Amitabh worked with Credit Suisse First Boston (New York) in their Technology Investment Banking & Advisory Division and Goldman Sachs in their Equities Sales & Trading Division. Amitabh graduated with a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, with concentrations in Finance and Management.

Richard A. Horodeck
Head of Client Development- Asia
The Rohatyn Group

Richard joined The Rohatyn Group (TRG) recently as its Head of Client Development-Asia, in which position he spearheads the firm's fundraising efforts across the region. TRG is a $2.5 billion AUM manager with offices in New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Johannesburg and Buenos Aires, whose specialty is cross-asset class EM investing. Richard is based in Hong Kong. Prior to joining TRG he served as President of the Tokyo office of Drake Management LLC, and before that was the Founder and Principal of HedgeJapan.com, a boutique legal and consulting firm that specialized in assisting Japanese institutions with their alternative investments, and whose website helped catalyze creation of the Japanese hedge fund industry. Richard has been advising hedge funds and hedge fund investors for over 20 years.

Stefan Nilsson
Founder and President
Tokyo Hedge Funds Club
Head of Capital Introduction – Japan and Singapore
JPMorgan

Stefan Nilsson is the Head of Capital Introduction, Japan & Singapore at JPMorgan. He previously headed capital introduction in Japan and Singapore for the prime brokerage business at Bear Stearns. Prior to this he spent two years working on sales and marketing of Bear Stearns Asset Management’s hedge fund products. Before joining Bear Stearns Japan he was Managing Director and Head of the Tokyo office of Profit Research Center, a hedge fund advisor in Tokyo, as well as Member of the Supervisory Board of ProfitFundCom, a fund management company. Mr. Nilsson is the Founder and President of the Tokyo Hedge Funds Club (www.hedgefundsclub.com), an industry network for the Japanese hedge fund industry and he recently also founded the Singapore Hedge Funds Club. He was educated in Sweden, England and the US and received his MBA from Leicester University in England.

StefanoRusso-80 Stefano Russo
CEO
Renaissance Institutional Management (UK) Ltd.

Mr. Russo joined Renaissance in May 2006. Prior to that, he spent 13 years with Morgan Stanley Investment Management as a managing director, heading the European and Middle East institutional business. From 1988 to 1993, he worked at ING Milan as CEO of the Asset Management Division. From 1980 to 1987 he worked for Continental Grain Company in New York, and was vice president and senior trader in the Proprietary Trading Division. Mr. Russo holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BA in engineering/architecture from the University of Rome. He is an advisory board member of the NYU Stern School of Business.

Photo.ZacPessin.070714 Zachary Pessin
President & CEO
Distributed Capital Group

Zac currently leads Distributed Capital Group, a macro specialist that designs and executes very robust strategies to capture yield for Pension, Insurance, and other parties focused on Asset Liabulity Management; as well as pure alpha capture for other types of invesotrs including Hedge Funds, Family Offices, Foundations, and multinational corporates.

Previously of JPMorgan's Capital Structure Advisory Solutions (CSAS) group, Zac worked with the small specialized team designing sophisticated bespoke solutions for select clients, predominantly multinational corporations confronting enormous complexity across the global distribution of their operations, tax liabilities, cash flows, capital structures, and the risks that accompany all of these things.

Earlier, Zac reported to the Global Head of Operational Risk, as part of the three-person team overseeing JPM's $7 billion capital model, a practice focused on defending the firm globally against extreme or "fat tail" risks.

During this time JPM's OpRisk program was considered the most advanced in the world, winning various recognition including RiskMagazine's top award two years in a row. Zac has an Enginnering degree from Stanford University, and a Master's in Management Strategy for East Asia, from Yale University.

He has lived and worked in Japan and is conversationally fluent in Japanese.

Kazuhiro Ooki
Regional Sales Manager
Icap Electronic Broking, Japan & Korea

Kazu Ooki is Regional Head of Sales for ICAP Electronic Broking‘s FX Division in Japan and Korea and has also been the representative director for the EBS Dealing Resources’ Japan subsidiary since April 1999.

Ooki joined Citicorp/Quotron as Sales Executive of Quotron FX Trader in 1991 and was responsible for the successful launch of the new product in Japan.

He was responsible for the MINEX/EBS integration project in 1996, which resulted in an increase in EBS’ USD/JPY market share from 10% to 42% in just two months. From 1997 to 2000, he held the position of Senior Relationship Manager for EBS Japan, responsible for expanding both customer base and trading volume.

In 2002, Ooki was appointed Regional Sales Manager for EBS in Japan. In 2005 his remit was extended to include Korea and most recently he has been responsible for the recently signed strategic alliance with Korean Money Brokerage.

Ooki has been a member of the Tokyo Foreign Exchange Market Committee since April 2003 and is also the chairperson for the Committee’s sub-committee on public relations.