CAPITAL MARKETS TECHNOLOGY and QUANTITATIVE EXECUTIVE
Senior, hands-on, technology/ quantitative-analytics executive who is very effective in extreme environments.
Strong track record in developing lines of business, financial products, arbitrage strategies, technology.
From boutique to bulge bracket, I drive technology and quantitative analytics to the bottom line.
PROFESSIONAL HISTORY
Manhattan Consulting & Research, Inc., Chicago 2009 Present
Senior Vice President
With the Global Financial Consulting experience, I have been the driving force in founding this consulting boutique. We are focused on the technology and quantitative support of Chicago proprietary trading firms and fund managers. Closed the first fiscal year with revenues approaching $0.4-million and a team of three on assignment. Our business plan looks to triple the team and revenue in the second fiscal year.
Initial contracts have included several projects at JP Morgan Chase with onsite teams of up to ten. The JP Morgan contract was won with my reputation and contacts. Major project deliverables have shown a number of successes including:
+ Enhanced the enterprise Order Management System from 12x5 to 23x7 operation. This is in current use at all Chase branches and will form the underlying OMS for Chase Online Trading. (Earlier Global Financial Consulting executed projects for this same OMS.)
+ Reorganized the global new business integration group that on-boards clients, exchanges and vendors into the order management and routing infrastructure with a focus on improved low latency processing.
SunGard Investment Systems, Lombard, IL 2007 2009
Director ASP Projects and Technology
This position was offered without formal interview process based on my reputation and contacts. The primary responsibility was the 2-year migration of SunGard's largest ASP InvestONE customer (Bank of New York, Mellon) to a fully redundant, high availability, high performance, scalable, Linux/ UNIX environment in dual data centers with 800-mile separation. The project budget was $12-million with an ROI of under 24 months. An indication of the success of this project can be found in the recommendations at my LinkedIn profile:
I have worked with John for several decades now. When it comes to technology projects he is the best implementer I have ever met. -- My Hiring Manager
a professional that is organized, self-motivated, and works well in diverse cross functional teams.
I would gladly welcome the opportunity to work with him in the future
. -- Lead Engineer/ Architect at SunGard Computer Services
a no-nonsense business man that is fair, open and honest. -- Top Software Vendor
has the ability to manage multiple projects shifting workloads in a fast paced environment
[and]
has managed some large project[s] from inception to completion
-- Customer Care Manager at my data centers
John's strength is in project management and [he] gives 150% to the projects he's working on
. [His strength] also comes from defining a process and analyzing that process
[asking] many questions
which can help the engineers to implement better solution[s]. -- My Network Manager
Additional responsibilities in the position included heading the ASP operations projects, network, security/ audit, change management, problem management and UNIX system engineering departments. The staff totalled 15. Some of the achievements in these responsibilities were:
+ Implemented division wide ITIL best practices in product change management, incident management and data center operations which reduced failed change and incident occurrence significantly.
+ Improved network throughput and response by over 180% with a major network refresh.
+ Streamlined project management engagements to reduce response time by 20%.
+ Reorganized System Engineering department for a primary concentration on UNIX support.
Global Financial Consulting, Inc., New York, London 1996 2005
Managing Director
Joined this consulting firm to build a Capital Markets consulting division as a greenfield opportunity. Built this into a multi-million dollar business over a ten year period across a New York and London customer base. During this time I ran projects within my division and acted as COO in the full company. The projects varied greatly in scope, client and requirements. Large projects typically staffed with a team of 15.
A sample of clients and projects include:
+ Bear Stearns: We won a number of contracts at Bear Stearns base on my ongoing relationships. One major project was building the infrastructure and software for a WLAN/ tablet PC deployed to clearance clients on option exchange floors. The product was a full feature Execution Management System providing a live option montage and risk analysis. The market maker could hedge an option position in the stock real time from the option floor. This product proved best of breed on the floor and helped Bear Stearns maintain their Clearance market share.
Another major project for Bear Stearns was the design and prototype of an OMS performance monitoring and control system. This product was non-intrusive while fully accounting for all transaction throughput and latency. It allowed extensive transaction flow control on the part of the operations team.
+ London Clearing House/ Clearnet: When London Clearing House looked to start OTC interest rate swaps clearing my reputation from Standard Chartered won a product development contract. Our team provided the subject matter expertise, risk model and marketing in The City. This success led to several contracts at LIFFE where we surveyed and designed Execution Management Systems and analytics as trading migrated off of the floor.
+ Monis (SunGard): Again from my reputation in The City we won this contract to add the Credit Default Swap and other credit derivatives into the Monis Risk Management System. All parties considered it a major success when we stepped in and support this effort that had stalled for technical and modeling reasons. In hitting our target date we kept the Monis product ahead of their competition.
+ CIBC World Markets: Looking for new trading opportunities the program trading desk at CIBC found our expertise in high frequency microstructure models very attractive. This expertise was developed with my research at the University of Westminster and models developed and benchmarked for a London proprietary trading firm. For CIBC we developed an extensive business case analysis and proposed several microstructure models along with projected RIO.
University of Westminster, London 1999 2001
Senior Lecturer, Finance Department
While continuing as Managing Director at Global Financial Consulting, I accepted this position in the School of Economics to lecture in upper undergraduate and graduate courses; organize and co-run the MBA program in Quantitative Finance and carry out research. This position was very attractive in that it allowed me to continue to build the contacts and reputation of Global Financial Consulting while I deepened my academic research. The research was centered in high frequency market microstructure trading strategies and credit valuation/ debt instrument pricing. I also led various seminars and taught special classes at other London universities.
Standard Chartered Bank, London, Singapore, Hong Kong 1994 1996
Vice President
Recruited to head the Quantitative Structuring Desk. The position presented an incredible attractive greenfield opportunity for its new markets, global responsibilities and being a critical participant in the building of a 300-person Capital Markets dealing and trading division as an expansion of the traditional Treasury desk. Unfortunately this proved short lived as bank senior management reversed their course after two years despite the profitability of the new division.
Over a period of about three months I built a department of four on the London desk. I also had reporting to me a financial engineer in Singapore and another in Hong Kong. Some of the achievements of my team were:
+ Integrated and extended CA*TS (Summit equivalent) swaps and options trading/ risk management system. This allowed much better integration to the middle and back office systems and allowed us, with improved risk control, to increase our notional by 400%.
+ Built and integrated a suite of models for structured products and exotic options. This allowed about a three fold expansion in the deal types quoted by the desk and cut the average deal approval time to about three hours. It also moved many of these deals off spreadsheets and into the CA*TS product.
+ Priced all interest rate, debt, commodities, and cross currency structured product deals on the desks.
With the division's and my group's growing reputation I was asked to head a committee to review and recommend market based credit limits and valuation techniques to replace the traditional commercial banking credit limits.
With the successes of the Quantitative Structuring Desk I was asked to head the APR (Asia Pacific Rim) Convertible Bond Trading Desk. This desk also covered the three market centers with the anchor in London. I created, presented and got approval from the head of Capital Markets a full business plan. With this plan we executed a reorganization of all trading and instituted tight portfolio management in a global book. This successfully introduced strong and transparent risk management.
An additional success from the business plan was a refocus of the four traders from position taking to arbitrage trading and support of the UK Bond Desk in product structuring. We successfully placed with European investors five Sterling debt issues on APR corporate exposure for a total of $50-million in about seven months.
SSARIS (State Street Global Advisors), Stamford, CT 1993 1994
Vice President
Recruited to head the Quantitative Research Department at this $1.5-billion, derivatives-based, non-discretionary fund manager. This position offered an opportunity to move to a quant-trader role and be closer to the Wall Street business environment. Primary responsibilities included research presentations to clients and media along with decision making and advisory roles on the investment management, fund structuring, trading strategy and fund allocation committees.
My team of four did extensive work on existing technical indicator models including successful improvements using time series techniques. Another highly successful automated trading strategies was developed for capturing post event, implied volatility reversion in interest rate baskets.
In a downturn we revisited the portfolio construction schema in the funds. The nonlinear optimization across security and cash allocation indicating very strong potential. The method included high dimension, non-convex boundaries along risk of ruin and compensation constraints.
Susquehanna International Group, Philadelphia, New York 1988 1993
Associate Director
Having built a strong reputation in program trading technology and analytics at Bear Stearns I was offered the lead position at the close of a single day's interviews. This was a very attractive greenfield opportunity to build all technology and analytics at a growing, preeminent derivatives trading/ market maker firm., Starting with 3 I built a department of 50+. This group supported the firm, clients and business partners in spot/ derivative, domestic/ international equities and currencies trading/ market making.
Business achievements I led and directed include:
+ Built a Program Trading/ Algo System that moved Susquehanna from #7 to #1 in proprietary program trading and that has remained a highly profitable business for over 20 years.
+ Built a real time market data capture and distribution with a historical tick database used in manual and automated trading as well as desk top EMS (Execution Management Systems).
+ Built and traded a number of highly profitable statistical arbitrage trading models.
+ Built and deployed stock trading daemons that automated real time statistical arbitrage and other strategies.
+ Deployed the Program Trading/ Algo System at the Industrial Bank of Japan to expand this profit center to the Tokyo/ Osaka markets.
+ Built various EMS platforms and pricing models to support the vanilla options market making/ trading and expand to exotic options, warrants and convertible bonds. These profit centers became and have remained core in the business.
Deployed the EMS/ pricing models to support a highly successful options trading desk in partnership with Chase Bank.
+ Completed an office and floor trading infrastructure in the headquarters office.
+ Built a strong technology/ quant intern program drawing on local schools with a focus on Wharton School and MIT AI Lab.
Bear, Stearns & Company, Inc., New York, Chicago 1983 1988
Associate Director
Recruited as a programmer-analyst. Advanced to software, quantitative algorithm design architect. In about three years I was promoted to Associate Director at a time when this was the second highest level position in the partnership and had equity participation. During the five years I designed and led software product development for:
+ Program Trading/ Algo systems used in different versions for proprietary trading and Broker/ Dealer client trading.
+ Real time market data capture and distribution with a historical tick database
+ Equity/ Equity Option Portfolio/ Risk Management System used for internal trading desks and Market Maker Clearance clients.
+ Futures/ Futures Options Portfolio Management and Middle Office Accounting System used for Commodity Clearance clients.
Pace University, New York 1983 1988
Associate Professor, Mathematics Department
This adjunct teaching position allowed me to stay current in the academia, particularly Quantitative Finance. I taught core courses in statistics and mathematics. I also developed, had approved by the Curriculum Committee and gave a graduate level course in the the mathematics of option pricing and hedging.
EDUCATION
Ohio State University
Teaching/ Research Associate, Astronomy Department
Ph.D. Candidate, Astrophysics Specialization: Computer modeling of stellar atmospheres
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University
Master of Science plus all but dissertation for Ph.D., Applied Mathematics
Villanova University
Bachelor of Science, Mathematics and Astronomy Specialization: Computer modeling of stellar interiors
CORE COMPETENCIES, SKILLS and PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Effective project leadership of large, multilevel, global, business-driven Capital Markets projects for technology and services.
Proven project delivery track record using applicable project paradigms (SDLC, Agile, Spiral); commitment to project planning software and PMBOK based process; and take-charge project ownership.
Strong business development through profit opportunity discovery; firm-wide partnership; clear, persistent communication; and solution modeling, design, development and implementation using technology and structure for the bottom line.
Operations process improvement through review, analyze, recommendation and implementation of ITIL standards.
Software design/ project leadership focused on low latency, large throughput transaction processing systems in C, C++.
Infrastructure architecture design and implementation for large scale, high availability data centers and networks.
Excellent organizational skills with strong detail orientation and ability to identify/ rectify impacting issues.
Budget modeling and management at segment, department and project levels for ROI/ value identification and retention.
Software design and project leadership with focus on low latency, large throughput transaction processing systems in C, C++, Java, Sybase, Oracle (secondarily VB, MSVC) using applicable project paradigms (SDLC, Agile, RAD, Spiral).
Infrastructure architecture design and implementation for large scale hot-hot data centers in support of UNIX, Linux high availability (HA), global, WAN application services for enterprise and customer business.
ITIL Foundations v3 Certification: 2009
Project Management Institute, PMP Certification: Expected January 2011
Retreat and charity work at St. Benedicts Monastery near Aspen, Colorado: 2006 2007 |
