Speaker Biographies - London

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Rebecca joined TABB Group in March 2011, bringing more than 15 years’ experience in e-trading and financial services. She has held various positions in sales and trading positions with Bankers Trust, Goldman Sachs and, most recently, Credit Suisse, where as vice president she was instrumental in launching the AES product to hedge funds from its inception in 2002 until 2008. Prior to the AES launch, she was the first electronic trader at Credit Suisse to be registered for all electronic European Cash Equity Markets and covered sales trading into Asia and Europe from 1997 to 2000.

More recently, based in the Middle East from 2008 to 2010, Rebecca was employed by the British Embassy in Bahrain where she successfully launched the UK Government’s Financial Services strategy and set up the Bahrain Financial Services roundtable that remains a key source of information for the UK Government today, especially in relation to Islamic Finance. Rebecca holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from University College London, majoring in Spanish and Latin American history and politics.

Hirander Misra is Managing Director of Misra Ventures Ltd, an independent advisory firm involved in electronic trading product development, market structure, regulatory change and trading technology for exchanges/MTFs,trading firms, banks, vendors and post trade providers.

Prior to this he was Chief Executive and co-founder of Algo Technologies Ltd responsible for running Algo Technologies to deliver specialist high speed trading technology solutions. Previously, he was the Chief Operating Officer of Chi-X Europe Limited and one of the founding Directors of the company. Hirander was instrumental in taking the company from concept in November 2005 to reality resulting in a successful launch on 30th March 2007.

Robert is the Managing Director of Equities at UBS Investment Bank, responsible for Market Structures and also serves as the Chief Executive of UBS MTF. Dr. Robert Barnes joined the proprietary trading team at Swiss Bank Corporation in 1994, and gained experience both “downstairs” on the Liffe derivatives floor as a yellow jacket, and “upstairs” while trading special situations via brokers.  

Robert was Chairman of the Securities Trading Committee of the London Investment Banking Association from 2004 to 2009.  He served as a member of AFME, a member of user advisory groups for a number of Stock Exchanges and pro-competitive initiatives world-wide, the FSA's Capital Markets Senior Practitioner Committee, Euroclear's UK MAC, European Commission's CESAME + CESAME2, FTSE's Country Classification Committee and Policy Group.  He was also a Chartered Fellow and Non-Executive Director of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment. Robert holds a Bachelors degree from Harvard University and a PhD from University of Cambridge.

Tim Bevan joined Otkrite in 2009 as DMA sales and is now a Director in the Global Electronic Trading Services division.  Prior to that, Tim started out at the London Stock Exchange for eight years, where he managed its Exchange Traded Fund, Exchange Traded Commodity and securitised derivatives business, playing a key role in the development of Russian depository receipts derivatives on the exchange’s EDX platform. After six years at the exchange he moved into delta-1 structuring and equity sales at Renaissance Capital.  The Russian brokerage is tapping the growing flow between London and the booming Russian equities market, and has become a significant player on the LSE’s international order book in recent months.

Matthew Cousens is a Director within the Advanced Execution Services Group (AES) of Credit Suisse’s Investment Banking Division. Matthew manages sales for the Broker Dealer client base and is responsible for HFT (High Frequency Trading) sales within EMEA. Matthew joined Credit Suisse in March 2007 and was initially responsible for institutional accounts in Northern Europe and the UK. In 2008, Matthew was mandated with the responsibility of running the European Broker Dealer business for AES and oversaw compound growth rate from this area of over 400%.

Prior to joining Credit Suisse, Matthew was Head of DMA Sales at AKJ Ltd. (a global electronic broker dealer specialising in DMA solutions). Previous to this, he was General Manager at  EBI Ltd where he was responsible for overseeing electronic brokerage operations and the day-to-day running of the firm. Matthew was elected to the Board of Directors at EBI before managing the integration and sale of EBI ltd. into AKJ ltd. at the end of 2006.

Steve is responsible for Fidessa’s strategic development. This includes the development of new geographic markets and strategic partnerships and driving new industry initiatives.

As part of this Steve heads up the firm’s strategy in response to the fragmentation of the equities trading landscape, managing the firm’s initiatives in conjunction with both the established exchanges and the new and emerging alternative liquidity venues and dark pools. Steve has also played a significant part in bringing the Fidessa Fragmentation Index (FFI), the Fragulator® and the Tradalyzer™ to the wider trading community. He provides a regular commentary on the issues surrounding fragmentation of the markets on the community forum that was launched at the end of 2008.

On joining Fidessa in 2004 Steve led the development of the company’s multi-asset trading capabilities. For four years, he worked to extend the core strengths of the Fidessa platform and ensure that all enhancements support an asset agnostic architecture to deliver multi- and cross-asset trading across its product lines globally.

Prior to joining Fidessa Steve was the founder and CEO of specialist derivatives software house Future Dynamics which was one of the companies at the vanguard of the shift from open outcry to screen based trading in world derivatives markets. This business grew to be one of the major facilitators of workflow based derivatives trading and was eventually sold in 2004.