Teaching Team
LFS Faculty (surname alphabetical order)
At London Financial Studies we are able to attract prominent practitioners and academics all of whom have a clear and thorough grasp of their subjects and wide practical experience. They are all expert communicators with the ability to impart their knowledge in a clear and engaging way.
Simon Acomb
Dr Simon Acomb has over 16 years experience in quantitative finance. He started his career in finance at Barclays deZoete Wedd in 1992 in the Equities Derivatives Group and progressed to run the quantitative research team. This was followed by five years at Commerzbank where he established a derivatives proprietary trading team and then became head of the equity quantitative research group. Most recently Simon has been a managing director at Morgan Stanley as global head of the Equities Analytic Modelling Group. He now works as a consultant and trainer in mathematical finance.
- Volatility: Trading and Managing Risk
Carol Bell
Dr.
Bell is a very experienced practitioner in the field of equity research.
During the 1990s she was head of European equity research at JP Morgan
and global head of JP Morgan's energy team. Carol combines teaching with
non-executive directorships and advisory positions in the oil and gas
industries. Carol also chairs the Investment Committee of Girton College,
Cambridge, and is Treasurer of the British School in Athens, the UK's
archaeological institution in Greece.
Cheryl Brown
Cheryl Brown is one of LFS’s most experienced lecturers. Formally with Bank of America she spent ten years as a derivatives trader and client advisor and has subsequently had extensive experience of teaching at a senior level in the areas of fixed income derivatives, interest rate risk management and foreign exchange. Cheryl graduated with a B.Sc. in Physics from University College London and before moving to the front office she developed Money Market processing systems for the bank.
- Interest Rate Derivatives: Hedging and Managing Risk
John Calverley
John
Calverley is Chief Economist and Strategist at American Express Bank,
based in London. He is responsible for the Global Economics Unit's economic
and investment research capability and provides advice to the Bank's institutional
and private clients worldwide. He edits the Bank's suite of publications
on economic and market trends, Economics for Investment. John is an accomplished
and entertaining teacher. He makes frequent appearances on CNN, CNBC and
other news media and is a regular speaker at a range of international
conferences. His books include Investors Guide to Economic Fundamentals
and Bubbles and how to survive them. He is also a former chairman of the
Society of Business Economists.
- Asset Allocation and the Business Cycle
Wiley Finance Published Author.
David Cox
Dr.
David Cox has wide practical experience of the financial markets and an
international reputation as a teacher of high-level short courses to the
financial sector. His career includes ten years in banking, primarily
with Bank of America Capital Markets. After leaving The City he joined
the staff of London Business School, as part of LBS Financial Software
Ltd, where he set up the financial markets seminar programme and engaged
in doctoral research.
Dr. Cox runs regular seminars for the International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering in Geneva and specialises in quantitative techniques, risk management and derivative products. Clients include central banks, a wide range of international investment and commercial banks and broking houses. He is also a director of LFS.
- Using Inflation Derivatives in
Today's Market
- Implementing Quantitative Techniques
for the Financial Markets
Dan Crisan
Dr
Dan Crisan is a Reader at Imperial College London. His expertise is in
the area of Stochastic Analysis with applications in Engineering and Finance.
He has published over 20 articles in journals world-wide and his current
research involves developing high-order numerical algorithms for solving
stochastic differential equations, approximating schemes for backward
SDEs and particle methods for nonlinear filtering. His book on Stochastic
Filtering will be appearing at Springer Verlag by the end of the year
and he is currently involved in editing an advanced handbook on Nonlinear
Filtering. Dr Crisan is a member of the editorial board of the LMS Journal
of Mathematics and Computation. He has developed and is currently teaching
a course on Numerical Stochastics within the MSc programme in Mathematical
Finance at Imperial College London.
- Intermediate Mathematics: Probability and Stochastic Processes
Werner De Bondt
Werner F.M. De Bondt is director of the Richard H. Driehaus Center for Behavioral Finance at De Paul University in Chicago. Between 1992 and 2003, he was the Frank Graner Professor of Investment Management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Werner De Bondt studies the psychology of investors and financial markets. His research is interdisciplinary. He is one of the founders of the field of behavioral finance. Werner De Bondt has examined key concepts of bounded rationality, e.g., people's tendency to exaggerate the true impact of new information, their bent towards wishful thinking, or their biased perceptions of risk. De Bondt's research articles have appeared in many scholarly journals. Werner De Bondt is a frequent speaker to academics and investment professionals around the world. He holds degrees in economics, engineering, and public administration, as well as a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Cornell University (1985).
- Behavioural Finance and Equity Investment Strategies
Hélyette Geman
Hélyette
Geman is Professor of Finance at the University of Paris Dauphine and
ESSEC Graduate Business School. Professor Geman has been a scientific
advisor to a number of major energy companies for the last decade, covering
the spectrum of oil, natural gas and electricity as well as agricultural
commodities origination and trading. She was previously Head of Research
and Development at Caisse des Depots. She has published more than 80 papers
in major finance journals and has written a book entitled 'Insurance and
Weather Derivatives'. Professor Geman is also a Member of Honour of the
French Society of Actuaries. Her research includes asset price modelling
using jump diffusions and Lévy processes, commodity forward curve
modelling and exotic option pricing, for which she won the Merrill Lynch
Awards first prize. She was named in 2004 in the Hall of Fame of Energy
Risk. Her latest book, 'Commodities and Commodity Derivatives' was published
by Wiley Finance in January 2005. She was recently awarded the ISA Medal
for Sciences - Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna (2008). Hélyette
is also a hugely popular and inspiring teacher.
- Commodities and Commodity Derivatives
Wiley Finance Published Author.
Jon Gregory
Dr.
Jon Gregory Jon has over ten years experience as a practitioner in quantitative
finance. From 1995 to 1997 he worked in the Fixed Income division of Salomon
Brothers. From 1997 to 2005 he was with BNP Paribas and worked on many
projects across the interest rate, equity, credit, insurance and risk
management divisions. From 2005 until 2008 he was global head of credit
analytics at Barclays Capital and responsible for a team of around 30
researchers globally. Jon has published a number of papers and articles
on risk management, modelling and credit derivatives subjects and is a
regular speaker at international conferences. He was a co-author of the
book "Credit: A Complete Guide to Pricing, Hedging and Risk Management",
nominated in 2001 for the Kulp-Wright award for the most significant text
in risk management and insurance. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University.
- Risk Management and Modelling
Jeremy Hawkins
Jeremy
Hawkins is a highly experienced and widely respected senior practitioner
with a wealth of experience at the sharp end of economic forecasting.
Until very recently he was Chief Economist for Europe and head of European
FX and short term interest rate strategy at Bank of America. Situated
in BoA's London dealing room, his numerous appearances on CNN the BBC
provided practical and entertaining on-the-spot interpretations of a wide
range of economic data and market sensitive events. Jeremy's ability at
communicating ideas to his audience is well known and his reputation for
"getting the numbers right" is legendary.
- The Impact of Economic Data on Financial Markets
Massimo Morini
Massimo
Morini has experience in financial consulting and teaching in both academies
and banks. He began working in mathematical finance as a financial modeller
at IMI Bank; he then moved into academic research in Milan and London,
while continuing to collaborate with IMI Bank, and in particular with
Damiano Brigo and Fabio Mercurio. His publications deal with different
aspects of quantitative finance, computational methods for Libor Market
Models, correlation modelling, tractable models for smile and credit modelling.
Massimo teaches interest rate modelling and credit modelling on various
quantitative finance masters courses and on international courses in London,
New York and Hong Kong. He also teaches mathematical finance at Milan
University. He was formally a research fellow at London's City University,
where he worked with Professor Nick Webber.
- BGM Market Models: Advances, Calibration, Smile, Pricing
Rick Nason
Dr Rick Nason is a
highly experienced practitioner and academic. Rick created the group and was Head of Credit Derivatives at the Bank of
Montreal and he has extensive experience in all fields of derivatives. Rick is currently an Associate Professor of Finance
at Dalhousie University in Canada and continues to be actively involved in derivative research, consulting and training.
His particular expertise is in exotic derivatives, equity derivatives and corporate risk management.
Rick is an inspirational lecturer with an international reputation. He has taught at The University of Toronto, The University of Western Ontario and The Rotterdam School of Management.
- Credit Derivatives 1: Risk Management,
Trading and Arbitrage
- Credit Derivatives 2: Practical
Implications of Pricing
- Equity Derivatives: Valuation and
Management
Kanak Patel
Dr. Kanak Patel is a Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics at Magdalene College, and Lecturer in Property Finance, University of Cambridge. She spent time as Market Analyst at Lloyds of London and has taught on MPhil, MBA and Senior Executive courses in corporate & real estate finance, international finance, real options, credit risk, portfolio management & institutional asset allocation. Dr Patel lectures abroad and travels regularly to speak at international conferences. Her current research and consulting interests include property derivatives and credit derivatives, real estate cycles, modelling default risk, pricing mortgage contracts, and securitisation.
Dr Patel was elected President of the Asian Real Estate Society (2003-2004) and President-Elect (2002-2003) and she is the co-founder of Cambridge-Maastricht Symposium and Cambridge-UNC Charlotte Symposium on Real Estate Risk Management. Since 2001 she has been a Co-Editor of the Special Issues, Journal of Real Estate Finance & Economics.
- Property Derivatives: Types, Usage,
Risks
- Property Value at Risk
Dean Paxson
Dean Paxson is Professor of Finance at the Manchester Business School where he teaches international corporate finance, banking and financial markets. Educated at Amherst (B.A.), Oxford (M.A.), and Harvard Business School (D.B.A.), he has been teaching derivative securities and real property options for several years. Current practical (and research) activities include "property value at risk" measurements for insurance companies and renovation timing in hotels, financial theory, futures, financial options and real options.
Dr. Paxson has published several books including The Blackwell Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Finance, Blackwell Publishers (1997), Real Options: Evaluating Corporate Investment Opportunities in a Dynamic World, Financial Times Prentice Hall (2001), Real R&D Options, Butterworth-Heinemann (2003), and Real Value, Forthcoming (2007). Other publications include articles on options and real property options, real stochastic volatility, real options and capital adequacy modelling.
- Property Derivatives: Types, Usage,
Risks
- Property Value at Risk
Ser-Huang Poon
Dr. Ser-Huang Poon is a Professor of Finance at Manchester Business School and has held several visiting appointments at universities in the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, and Singapore. She is internationally renowned for her volatility research. Her work, with Nobel laureate Clive Granger, was cited on Nobel web site as reference reading in volatility, and has won the Financial Analysts Journal Graham and Dodd Scroll Award for Excellence for 2005. She has published papers in international top ranking journals and has written three books, including a Wiley book on forecasting volatility.
- Trading and Managing Volatility
Wiley Finance Published Author.
Wim Schoutens
Professor
Schoutens is a research Professor in financial engineering in the Department
of Mathematics at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He has extensive
practical experience of model implementation and is well known for his
consulting work in the banking industry. Wim is also the author of Lévy
Processes in Finance: Pricing Financial Derivatives and co-editor of Exotic
Option Pricing and Advanced Lévy Models both published by Wiley.
His research interests cover all areas of financial mathematics, and recent
publications cover jump driven credit models as well as equity models,
model risks, hedging of exotics and multivariate financial modelling.
- Quantitative Techniques for Credit
Derivatives
- Equity Derivatives: Advanced Models
Wiley Finance Published Author.
Tony Sims
Tony
Sims has wide experience of teaching mathematical methods to students
at all levels. He is an MA Course Director at Kingston University Business
School and has been involved in delivering both short course and management
development programmes for over 20 years. During this time he has acquired
considerable practical experience through consulting projects in financial
model development for business. Tony's teaching methods are both engaging
and effective and he is well known for his skill in teaching mathematical
concepts to people without a quantitative background.
Ghulam Sorwar
Dr.
Ghulam Sorwar is a highly experienced finance academic with a wealth of
practical experience. Following a career on the derivatives desk at Abbey
Life Investment Services, he joined City University Business School where
he helped to develop the MSc in Mathematical Trading and Finance and taught
the numerical methods course. He is currently a full time member of the
finance faculty at Nottingham University and has published widely on financial
time series simulation and options pricing for risk management. Ghulam
is also an energetic teacher who puts across his subject matter in a relevant
and entertaining way.
- Introduction to Financial Data
Analysis
- Modelling Financial Risk
Radu Tunaru
Radu
Tunaru has a PhD in Probability and Statistics and he has developed
the MSc in Quantitative Finance at Cass Business School, City University
in London. He worked in the City for Bank of Montreal (2006-2007) in Structured
Credit Investments dealing with the cash-flow risk management models for
two SIVs and the launch of one CDPC, and for Merrill Lynch (2007-2008)
in Structured Finance, EMEA RMBS, dealing with prepayment models, default
models, hedging products such as balance guaranteed swaps, property derivatives,
equity release mortgages; working with model validation and quant teams
for product development and testing. His expertise includes: probability
and stochastic calculus, mathematical finance, Markov Chain Monte Carlo
and Monte Carlo simulation methods for finance, derivatives pricing, credit
risk, market risk, inancial engineering applications for structured products,
portfolio credit derivatives pricing, volatility modelling related to
investment opportunities in emerging markets.
He is the recipient of Multinational Finance Journal Best Paper Award, vol 5, 2001, for the paper “Emerging Markets: Investing with Political Risk”, Eastern Finance Association prize for the Outstanding Paper in International Finance for the paper “Modelling Political Risk with a Doubly Stochastic Poisson Process”, Charleston USA 2001; and SMEED prize awarded for the best young researcher in the field, 31st UTSG Annual Conference, York 1999. He has published over 30 articles and book chapters.
- Advanced Mathematical Models in Finance
- Mortgage-Backed Securities: Assessment and Management of Risk
Nick Webber
Nick
Webber is Director of the Financial Options Research Centre at the University
of Warwick. He was previously Professor of computational finance at Cass
Business School, City University and Director of the Cass Centre for computational
finance. Nick is a regular speaker at academic and industry conferences.
His research interests are in computational finance, and in particular
the development of fast lattice and Monte Carlo methods. He has also undertaken
research into credit, interest rate and returns modelling, and Lévy
processes and copulas. He is also co-author with Jessica James of the
well-known book 'Interest Rate Modelling'.
Wiley Finance Published Author.
Uwe Wystup
Professor Wystup is an extremely
experienced practitioner in the field of foreign exchange options, a senior academic and a highly engaging teacher. He has eight years
of front office experience as financial engineer, trader and structurer at UBS, Sal.Oppenheim and Commerzbank and is also Professor
of quantitative finance at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. Uwe is well known for his many publications on FX
exotics and related topics, and his 2002 book on Foreign Exchange Risk has become a market standard. His new book on FX Options
and Structured Products appeared in November of 2006 as part of the Wiley Finance series and a copy will be available for delegates.
Wiley Finance Published Author.
