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Laurence B. Siegel
Director of Research
Ford Foundation
Michael Dubin, President
The LongChamp Group
Tom Heck
Chief Investment Officer
Ball State University Foundation
Francois Bonnin
Chief Investment Officer
John Locke Investments
Brad Cole
President
Cole Partners Asset Management
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Meet our speakers
Chief Economist,
NGP Energy Capital Management
Dr. Alhajji is chief economist at NGP Energy Capital Management, Irving, TX. He is a noted author and a regular contributor to national and international publications and academic journals with more than 500 papers, articles, and columns to his credit. His articles have appeared in numerous countries and in more than 10 languages. He served as a professor of economics at Ohio Northern University where he held the George Patton Chair of Business and Economics. Before joining Ohio Northern, Alhajji worked at two universities that are strongly affiliated with the energy industry, the University of Oklahoma and the Colorado School of Mines. Alhajji is also a contributing editor for one of the industry's premier publications, World Oil magazine and serves on the editorial board of several energy publications. Dr. Alhajji holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics, with specialization in energy economics from the University of Oklahoma. He received many awards including the Teaching Excellence Award and the Outstanding Mentor Award, in addition to many prizes in woodworking contests. He is an Honorary Associate at the Center for Energy, Petroleum, and Mineral Law at Dundee University, Scotland, United Kingdom, and a member of the Honor Society for International Scholars.
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Managing Director,
Forum Asset Management, LLC
Harvey Black is a Managing Director at Forum Asset Management a $400 million hedge fund focusing on credit, equity, agricultural commodity, and asset based lending strategies primarily in the emerging markets. Mr. Black has over 20 yrs experience in sales and trading and the alternative investment industry. Prior to joining Forum Mr. Black was President of Black Capital Partners a firm specializing in capital raising and consulting for the hedge fund community. Mr. Black spent 7 years at Lehman Brothers in emerging market, credit derivative, and structured product sales. Mr. Black also headed emerging market sales for the Americas for Bank of America. Mr. Black began his career as a trader at Salomon Brothers in 1986. Mr. Black has a B.A. in Economics from Tufts University and an MBA in Finance from the Marshall School at the University of Southern California.
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Managing Partner and CEO,
John Locke Investments
Francois Bonnin is the Managing Director and Founding Partner of John Locke Investments SA, a company which was set up near Paris, France in 2001. He is joined in this position by Marc Botter and a team of 15 individuals between their offices in Fontainebleau and Garches. The firm offers systematic managed futures strategies, and currently manages in excess of USD 400 million. JLI proprietary investment programs are based on the systematic application of computerized trading strategies, qualified within a quantified risk management framework. The strategies are purely technical and based on in-depth analysis of market price movements. The recognition of particular price configurations (patterns formed over time by market price movements) is key to John Locke's strategies. John Locke Investments' systems follow the market's price activity on a continuous basis and immediately detect any upcoming opportunity. Prior to this, he was in charge of the Research and Alternative Investments at ING France from September 1998 to June 2001. Between March 1992 and September 1998, Mr. Bonnin was Managing Director and Founding Partner of CAP STARDEX SA, a French AMF regulated asset management company. From September 1989 to March 1992, Mr. Bonnin was a director of the convertible bonds trading desk at RAFE SA. Mr. Bonnin graduated from International University of America with an MBA (Paris-France) and with a major in Finance in 1986. From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Bonnin was member of the AFG-ASFI International Commission and a member of the Board of AFATE, the French section of the International Federation of Technical Analysis.
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Managing Partner,
Aqua Terra Asset Management
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CFA, FRM, Vice President - Fixed Income - Derivatives,
Credit Suisse Asset Management
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President,
Cole Partners Asset Management
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Managing Director,
FIA Timber Partners
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President,
Touchstone Group LLC
Mr. Cunningham is President and Co-Founder of Touchstone Group, LLC, a financial services firm that raises institutional capital for hedge fund and private equity managers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australasia. Touchstone was founded in 2002 and operates with six full-time professionals in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Sydney, Australia. The company’s principals have helped raise over $2.5 billion in institutional capital.
Previously, Mr. Cunningham co-founded and served as President of an investment management firm that advised the first life-cycle mutual funds focused on retirement investing, and advised pension fund trustees on a variety of asset-liability and governance issues. Prior to this, he served as a investment consultant to a number of major institutional investors on alternative asset allocations. Mr. Cunningham co-founded and managed a group of venture capital funds headquartered in Philadelphia. He has co-authored two books on investing. Mr Cunningham holds a Masters of International Management (with honors) from the American Graduate School of International Management and a BA (magna cum laude with highest honors) from Williams College.
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Jerome de Lavenere Lussan, Managing Partner,
Laven Partners
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Senior Managing Director,
The LongChamp Group, Inc.
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Co-Founder and Head of Trading,
Tiberius Asset Management
After studies of general economics with an emphasis in banking & finance, Chris began his career at Baden-Wuerttembergische Bank AG in Stuttgart. He worked as a proprietary trader in the banks trading division in which he was also in charge of setting up and establishing a commodity trading desk. Aside the proprietary trading he also took care of the development and the issue of commodity derivatives. After four years with the Southern German private bank, he joined DrKW as vice president, the investment branch of the Dresdner Bank AG in Frankfurt, to support their commodities team. At DrKW he was responsible for international customers in the fields of precious metals and commodities. Business with mining operations, central banks, hedge funds and commodity investors contributed to his substantiated record. At the end of June of 2005 he left the commodity trading division of Dresdner Bank AG to found Tiberius Asset Management AG with partners. At Tiberius he is in charge of commodity trading and marketing.
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Managing Director,
First Reserve Corporation
Cathleen M. Ellsworth, Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer, joined First Reserve in 1990. Ms. Ellsworth has overall responsibility for the firm's marketing, fundraising and investor relations activities, as well as the firm's communication and public relations activities and coordination of the Limited Partner co-investment activities. Prior to joining First Reserve, she was in the marketing group at MacKay-Shields Financial Corporation and, prior to that time, spent eight years with Chemical Bank primarily working in the marketing area of the Chemical Investment Group and its related entities. Ms. Ellsworth received an A.S. degree from Bradford College, a B.S. degree in Management from the State University of New York at Binghamton and an M.B.A. from Fordham University. Ms. Ellsworth now serves on the board of the Direct Fund Foundation.
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General Manager,
Bunge Emission Fund
Alfred Evans joined Bunge’s Financial Services Group in 2003 and is currently responsible for Bunge’s emissions credits business. He has 15 years of experience structuring and executing investments in emerging markets and has emissions experience from the US EPA and a leading manufacturer of power generation equipment. Mr. Evans holds a JD from Columbia Law School in New York and a Masters of International Finance (Mathematics) from the University of Amsterdam.
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Max Ferri is a manager and senior analyst at Laven Partners responsible for hedge fund selection and distribution. Laven Partners is an investment management consultant offering a one stop shop solution for fund structure, compliance, tax, legal and distribution services working for large and developing institutional clients. Max has 9 years experience in the financial industry with backgrounds in portfolio analysis, fund of hedge funds management, and private banking. Max regularly advises both investors and funds, with a core focus on operational due diligence and risk assessment. Prior to joining Laven Partners, Max worked with Concorde Bank a privately owned bank in the Caribbean where he was in charge of managing portfolios and advising on asset allocation. Max is an FSA registered approved person and holds a Bsc in Business Administration. He is fluent in English and Italian.
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President,
Haar Capital Mgt LLC
Over 30 years of commodity and financial market experience;
Managed speculative and commercial futures accounts at Smith Barney, Prudential, and Shearson;
Responsible for the agribusiness portfolio at Bradesco Templeton Asset Management, a Brazilian joint venture of Franklin Templeton Investments and Banco Bradesco;
Worldwide responsibility for soybean products and regional marketing of grains and oilseeds at Continental Grain Company;
Featured in April 2006 edition of Futures Magazine;
Authored articles in Commodities Magazine and the Global Finance Journal and quoted in numerous industry publications;
Mr. Haar has a BA in Economics, summa cum laude, from The American University, was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship for graduate study in economics, was a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil with research focus on the International Coffee Agreement, and also studied at Stanford University where he earned a JD and MBA, along with a MA from the Food Research Institute with a concentration in futures markets and international trade.
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Director & Senior Commodity Strategist, Commodities Derivatives Trading,
Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking
Michael S. Haigh is Director and Senior Commodities Strategist, at Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking in New York City. In this role, Haigh manages a team that conducts analysis of supply and demand commodity fundamentals; forecasting prices using time series & structural modeling techniques, oversees the development of hedging and speculative strategies for commodity markets, and the development and employment of probabilistic forecasting models. Haigh is proficient in advanced forecasting/applied econometric techniques. E.g., ARCH/GARCH volatility models, ARIMA forecasting, VAR & Error Correction Models, Directed Acyclic Graphs (causality models) and Non-Parametric Techniques.
Immediately prior to Societe Generale, Haigh was the Associate Chief Economist for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. While at the CFTC he authored several key reports on commodity markets including seminal reports on the role of hedge funds in energy markets and the effect of index trading on the pricing of commodity contracts. While at the CFTC Haigh was part of the Presidents Working Group that discussed oversight of hedge funds and derivative markets. In addition to spearheading research, Haigh devotes a significant amount of his time speaking to the media about the commodity markets. He has appeared on CNBC and Bloomberg television and his reports have been cited in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, Fortune magazine and Business week. His research on commodity and futures markets has been published in journals including Journal of Finance, Journal of Business, Journal of Futures Markets, Journal of Applied Econometrics and the Journal of Forecasting among many others. Haigh also has been a frequent spokesman on the commodities futures markets at the industry’s leading conferences and roundtables. Haigh has held a tenured faculty position at the University of Maryland as Professor of Commodity Markets and has served on the faculty at Texas A&M. Prior to this he worked at the Economist Group in London. He has consulted with numerous financial and commodity corporations on optimal hedging and speculative strategies. Dr. Haigh is the recent winner of the competitive research paper award in Market Microstructure at the U.S. Financial Management Association meetings and his research has been nominated for the Smith Breeden prize for outstanding article in the Journal of Finance.
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Managing Director,
Eight Winds Capital Management
Mr. Hansel is the founder and portfolio manager of Eight Winds Capital Management, LLC. Prior to forming Eight Winds in July 2003, Mr. Hansel was Executive Director and Senior Portfolio Manager at UBS Global Asset Management in New York, where he founded and managed a multi-billion dollar UBS investment fund that was awarded two #1 awards by S&P for its five-year performance under Mr. Hansel’s management. At Eight Winds, Mr. Hansel focuses on investments broadly related to the long-term energy cycle, including both traditional energy and alternative energy. He believes that in the current environment, successful energy investing requires an understanding of both the commodity and technology fields. Mr. Hansel holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wesleyan University and a Master of Science degree from Fairleigh S. Dickinson University. Mr. Hansel is a Chartered Financial Analyst.
Mr. Hansel lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, with his wife and three children, in an Energy Star home equipped with geothermal heating and cooling.
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Senior Managing Director and Portfolio Manager,
Tocqueville Asset Management
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CFO,
Ball State University Foundation
Tom Heck, CFA is Vice President and Treasurer of the Ball State University Foundation. During his 19-year tenure assets of the foundation have grown from $27 million to over $235 million, with a corresponding evolution in the organization’s size and complexity. The foundation’s asset allocation has evolved from 65% fixed/35% equities to 15% fixed/40% equities/45% alternatives. In addition to the investment function, Mr. Heck oversees all financial functions of the foundation including financial reporting, gift processing, charitable trust and annuity administration, budgets, technology, and strategic financial planning.
Mr. Heck has served as treasurer of White River Health Care, P.C., an independent family practice office operated by his wife, Dr. Debbie Heck. Mr. Heck serves on the board of directors of the North Indiana United Methodist Foundation and has served in similar capacities in several church and other local not-for-profit organizations.
Mr. Heck received a B.S. in Social Studies Education from Purdue University in 1976 and an M.S. in Accounting from Ball State University in 1983, and received the CFA Charter in 2007. Memberships include the CFA Society of Indianapolis and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).
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Porfolio Manager – Renewable Energy Fund,
Ardsley Partners
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President and Chief Executive Officer,
Panacea Capital
Michael W. Hoeft graduated from UCLA (cum laude) in 2001. Directly afterwards, he worked as an Associated Person of a few Commodity brokerages in LA, CA. After building client relationships there and learning the ropes in the industry for 4 years, he left the industry and moved to Portland, OR to begin studying various trading strategies, most notably working on a market neutral trading strategy in the Live Cattle market. He then returned to Commodities in May 2006 to start his Commodity brokerage, Ramarcher Capital, then in November 2007 he formed his CTA, Panacea Capital, both HQ’ed in Portland, Oregon. His Ag Elixir Program, the market neutral Live Cattle trading strategy, is Panacea’s flagship program, and he is developing a few other market neutral programs and a market directional program for Panacea clients in the near future.
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Chief US Economist,
UniCredit
Roger M. Kubarych is Chief US Economist of UniCredit Global Research, part of UniCredit Markets and Investment Banking. He joined HVB Americas Inc., now part of UniCredit Group, in July 2001 with responsibility for advising management and clients on economic, financial market, and policy developments with significant implications for banking and investment decisions. He is also the Henry Kaufman Adjunct Senior Fellow for International Economics and Finance at the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he was chief investment officer of Kaufman & Kubarych Advisors LLC and general manager of Henry Kaufman & Company, Inc. Earlier in his career, he was Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the New York Stock Exchange and Deputy Director of Research of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has published two books: Stress Testing the System: Simulating the Global Consequences of the Next Financial Crisis (2001) and Foreign Exchange Markets in the United States (1980). He writes a regular column for Japan’s Nikkei newspaper and is a frequent commentator on business TV, radio, and print media. He is a graduate of Williams College, Oxford University, and Harvard University.
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Chief Executive Officer/Chief Investment Officer,
The National Railroad Retirement Investment Trust (NRRIT)
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As a Director of E Hedger, LLC, Gavin oversees the firm's analysis of and commentaries on the commodities futures markets, ensuring E Hedger customers are kept up-to-date with all of the latest major trends in the commodities arena. Gavin also advises investors on how best to acquire and maintain exposure to the commodities arena through futures and options. Before joining E Hedger, LLC, Gavin was Director of Research at Iowa Grain Company, a former clearing firm at the CBOT and CME. Prior to that, Gavin worked as a financial commodities journalist for Dow Jones Newswires, first in London, UK and then in New York. Gavin makes regular appearances on CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox Business News channels to discuss all aspects of the commodities marketplace, and has featured in the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Futures Magazine and other publications. Using his international background and journalism experience, Gavin provides E Hedger customers with breaking news and strategic insights needed to succeed in today's volatile marketplace.
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Senior Portfolio Manager,
Front Street Capital
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Senior Vice President, Chief Risk Officer and Portfolio Manager,
Asset Alliance
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Associate Director, Alternatives,
Hermes Fund Managers Limited
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Founder and Managing Member,
AC Investment Management
Ernest A. Scalamandre was born on March 23, 1963 in New York, New York, and received a B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. Mr. Scalamandre has worked in the alternative investmen tindustry for fifteen years and has managed a hedge fund of funds and its predecessor since 1993. From July 1995 until December 2005, Mr.Scalamandre was the Founder and Managing Member of Pinnacle Associates GP LLC (“Pinnacle”), a fund of hedge funds firm serving as the General Partner for several Pinnacle entities. Concurrently (May '03-December '05), Mr. Scalamandre was the Founder and Senior Managing Member of Pinnacle Asset Management LLC, a related entity and an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. From May 2003 to the present, Mr. Scalamandre has been The Managing Member of Par 3 Investments, LLC, which provided investment management services to Silver Creek Early Advantage Fund, Ltd. and Silver Creek Early Advantage Fund, L. P. and serves as the Managing Member of several investment entities. From December 2001 to March 2003, Mr. Scalamandre was the Managing Director of Bricolage Capital, LLC, an investment advisory firm which is a related person to Pinnacle (“Bricolage”). From March 2000 to December 2001, Mr. Scalamandre was the Director of Hedge Funds at Wealthplace, Inc., a boutique advisory firm that caters to high net worth investors, and from June 1998 to January 2000 at James River Capital Corp., one of the largest sponsors of alternative investments worldwide. Prior to this, he was a general partner of Nest & Co., a registered broker-dealer and floor trading firm, and has served as a partner in several NYSE and AMEX specialist partnerships.
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Director of Research,
Ford Foundation
Laurence B. Siegel is director of research in the Investment Division of the Ford Foundation in New York, where he has worked since 1994. Before that, he was a managing director of Ibbotson Associates, an investment consulting firm that he helped to establish in 1979. In 2005 Larry was named Research Director of the CFA Institute’s Research Foundation. He holds this position concurrently with his responsibilities at the Ford Foundation. Mr. Siegel currently chairs the investment committee of the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe. He serves on the investment committee of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and advises the boards of many other nonprofit organizations. He was a trustee of the Oberweis Emerging Growth Fund. Larry is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Journal of Investing, and is a member of the program committee of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance (the Q Group). His first book, Benchmarks and Investment Management, was published by the CFA Institute in 2003. Larry received his BA in urban studies from the University of Chicago in 1975, and his MBA in finance from the same institution in 1977.
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Director of Emerging Markets and Energy Research,
Medley Global Advisors
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Managing Director, Commodities & Fixed Income,
Commonfund Asset Management Company
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Chief Executive Officer,
Axiom Funds
Mohammed spent the majority of his career in derivatives trading and risk management. He started his career at The Bank of Tokyo in London and was then posted to Tokyo from 1986 to 1992. From 1992 to 1998, he worked for Barclays Capital/BZW Securities where he was a Managing Director and Regional Head of derivatives. He was elected an MD very early on in his career, making him one of the youngest ever Director’s in the group’s history. He was a member of the Global Derivatives and Capital Markets Executive Committee and headed the Derivatives and Capital Markets Group for Asia-Pacific. Between 1998 and 2000 he was Chief Operating Officer and Director for Sanwa International plc. and Sanwa Financial Products (now Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Group) and Chairman of the Executive Committee with responsibility for setting up and managing their investment banking and proprietary trading operations for Europe and in Asia. Mohammed has an M.Sc. and B.Sc. from the University of London.
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Portfolio Manager - Industrial Harvest Fund,
RidgeCrest Partners
Mr. Trentacoste joined Ridgecrest Partners August of 2006. Prior to Ridgecrest, Frank was co-founder and partner at Vault Partners, LLC, a global equity, thematic hedge fund. From June 2003 to August 2005, he served as the senior analyst for Javelin Partners, LLC. Mr. Trentacoste worked at Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank from 1994 to 1999. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1994 with a B.S. in Economics and a minor in Physics. In addition, Mr. Trentacoste received his MBA in Finance from the Stern School of Business at New York University in 2000. Mr. Trentacoste sits on the finance board at the Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola in New York.
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Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer,
Finles Capital Management
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Managing Director,
The Astrologers Fund
Since 1988, Henry Weingarten has been Managing Director of the Astrologers Fund, Inc., which employs Astrology as the primary analysis tool to manage investment funds and advise institutional investors and money managers worldwide. Also using fundamental and technical metrics, his unique “Top Down” approach has delivered an excellent long term track record in forecasting precious metals pricing from forecasting The DAYS gold first broke $400 and $800 to gold’s 2008 Spring and Summer recent highs. Mr. Weingarten is the author of INVESTING BY THE STARS.
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Former Global Emerging Market Strategist,
Willow Street Advisors
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