Camp Alphaville 2015

Zoltan Istvan is the founder and 2016 US Presidential candidate of the Transhumanist Party, a political organization dedicated to putting science, health, and technology at the forefront of American politics.

He has recently published The Transhumanist Wager, an award-winning, #1 bestselling Philosophy book describing philosopher Jethro Knights and his unwavering quest for immortality via science and technology.  He writes futurist and transhumanist-themed blogs for The Huffington Post, Psychology Today (The Transhumanist Philosopher), and Vice’s Motherboard (Transhumanist Future). He's also written for Slate, Gizmodo, Daily Mail, Wired UK, Singularity Hub, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Outside.  Mr Istvan is also a director of the conservation group WildAid, leading armed patrol units to stop the billion-dollar illegal wildlife trade in Southeast Asia. In addition to his award-winning coverage of the war in Kashmir, he gained worldwide attention for inventing the extreme sport of volcano boarding. 

At the age of 21, he began a solo, multi-year sailing journey around the world. His main cargo was 500 handpicked books, mostly classics. He’s explored over 100 countries—many as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel—writing, filming, and appearing in dozens of television stories, articles, and webcasts. His work has also been featured by The New York Times, BBC Radio, Business Insider, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, CNN, Fox News, RT, the Travel Channel, and in other media.  Back in America, he has started various successful businesses, from real estate development to filmmaking to viticulture, joining them under ZI Ventures. Mr Istvan is a philosophy and religious studies graduate of Columbia University.

His US Presidential campaign website is: www.zoltanistvan.com

Preston Byrne is a Co-Founder and COO of Eris Industries. Eris Industries makes free software that allows anyone to build their own secure, low-cost, run-anywhere data infrastructure using blockchain and smart contract technology. Mr Byrne is also a fellow of the Adam Smith Institute and an outspoken advocate for marmot habitat conservation.

Zoltan Pozsar is a Director in the Global Economics and Strategy research group, and is based in New York.  Prior to joining Credit Suisse in February 2015, he was a senior adviser to the US Department of the Treasury, where he advised the Office of Debt Management and the Office of Financial Research, and served as the Treasury’s liaison to the FSB on matters of financial innovation.

Mr Pozsar was previously at the IMF where he was involved in framing the Fund’s official position on shadow banking and consulted G-20 working groups. He consulted G-7 policymakers, central banks and finance ministries on global macro-financial developments.  Earlier on in his career, he was deeply involved in the response to the global financial crisis and the ensuing policy debate. He joined the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in August 2008 in charge of market intelligence for securitized credit markets and served as point person on market developments for senior Federal Reserve, US Treasury and White House officials throughout the crisis; played an instrumental role in building the TALF to backstop the ABS market; and pioneered the mapping of the shadow banking system which inspired the FSB’s effort to monitor and regulate shadow banking globally.

Before joining the official sector, Mr Pozsar was a US macroeconomist and Fed watcher for six years. He is a founding member of the Shadow Banking Colloquium of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and a former adviser on European affairs to Oriens Investment Management, a CEE-focused merchant bank in his native Budapest, Hungary.

Claudio Borio is Head of the Monetary and Economic Department (MED), Bank for International Settlements.  He has been at the BIS since 1987, covering various responsibilities in the Monetary and Economic Department including Director of Research and Statistics and Head of the Secretariat of the Committee on the Global Financial System and the Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee, which examine, inter alia, issues related to financial stability and market functioning.  From 1985-1987, he worked as economist at the OECD in the country studies branch of the Economics and Statistics Department.

Prior to that, he was Lecturer and Research Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford University.  He holds a DPhil and MPhil in Economics and a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the same university and is author of numerous publications in the fields of monetary policy, banking, finance and issues related to financial stability.

Simon Murray is currently the Non-Executive Chairman of GEMS.  He is a Board Director of the Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd., Orient Overseas (International) Ltd., Wing Tai Properties Ltd., Richemont SA, Greenheart Group Limited, IRC Limited, Spring Asset Management Limited, and China LNG Group Ltd. He has in the past served on boards and held advisory positions with a number of companies such as Vodafone, Tommy Hilfiger Corporation, Vivendi Universal, Usinor SA, Hermes, General Electric (USA), China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Macquarie Bank, N.M. Rothschild, and Bain (the consultancy company).  He stepped down as the Non-Executive Chairman of Gulf Keystone Petroleum in March 2015, and also ceased to be the Chairman of Glencore International in May 2013, as well as having resigned as Vice Chairman of Essar Energy plc in May 2014.  He continues to serve on the advisory board of Lightbridge Corporation (USA), SouthWest Energy (BVI) Ltd., and is a Senior Advisor on the International Advisory Council of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., PRC.  

Mr Murray is an adventurer, and explorer – and appears in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest man to walk unsupported to the South Pole in 2004 at the age of 64.  Prior to this, at the age of 60, he completed the Marathon des Sables, a 242 km race across the Moroccan desert.  Mr Murray has been awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) by H.M. The Queen, and the Order of Merit of the French Republic and is a “Chevalier de La Legion d’Honneur”.  He holds an Honorary Degree in law, from Bath University and attended the (SEP) Stanford Executive Programme in the US.

A world-renown authority on central banking, Peter Stella is a 25 year veteran of the International Monetary Fund where his positions included Head of the Central Banking and Monetary and Foreign Exchange Operations Divisions. He has provided macroeconomic policy advice to governments in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. He led the IMF task force that assessed the major central banks’ response to the global financial crisis.

He has published research on fiscal and monetary policy issues with a focus on the importance of central bank balance sheets on macroeconomic policy performance. His current working paper—Exiting Well—argues that the US Treasury should swap treasury bills for the Federal Reserve’s holdings of long term debt in order to facilitate an orderly downsizing of the Fed balance sheet.  Dr Stella holds aPhD in Economics from Stanford University.  His eponymous global consulting firm has private and public sector clients in Asia, Europe, the US and Latin America. Additional information on Stellar Consulting LLC may be found at: http://www.stellarconsultllc.com/

Steve Keen is a Professor of Economics & Head of the School of Economics, History & Politics at Kingston University.  He was one of the handful of economists to realize that a serious economic crisis was imminent, and to publicly warn of it, from as early as December 2005. A staunch critic of mainstream economics, his book Debunking Economics is now in its 2nd edition and has been translated into Chinese, French and Spanish. He builds complex system models of the economy based on the Hyman Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis, and has developed an Open Source modeling program called Minsky to build dynamic, monetary models of the macroeconomy. 

Gareth Lewis-Davies joined the Commodity Markets Strategy team in London in 2011 as Senior Oil Strategist. He covers oil markets, both in crude oil and products in support of our trading, sales, investor business and the commodity futures desk.   Prior to joining BNP Paribas, he occupied several senior positions either as oil analyst or head of energy research and market analytics. Mr Lewis-Davies has over 29 years’ experience in oil market analysis from industry (BP Integrated Supply & Trading), energy consulting (Wood Mackenzie), banking (Lehman Brothers, Dresdner Kleinwort) and international organisations (International Energy Agency). More recently, he was Head of Energy Commodity Research at Noble Group Limited, responsible for the development of energy trading analytics at the trading company.  

Mr Lewis-Davies is a graduate of Environmental Science from King's College, University of London and has a Master’s degree in Environmental Science (specialising in Energy Policy) from Imperial College, University of London.

Craig Pirrong is a Professor of Finance and the Energy Markets Director for Global Energy Management Institute at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston.  Mr Pirrong previously was the Watson Family Professor of Commodity and Financial Risk Management and associate professor of finance at Oklahoma State University. He has also served on the faculty of the University of Michigan Business School, Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago, and Olin School of Business of Washington University in St. Louis. He holds a Ph.D. in business economics from the University of Chicago. Mr Pirrong’s research focuses on the economics of commodity markets, the relation between market fundamentals and commodity price dynamics, and the implications of this relation for the pricing of commodity derivatives. He has also published substantial research on the economics, law and public policy of market manipulation. Mr Pirrong also has written extensively on the economics of financial exchanges and the organization of financial markets, and most recently on the economics of central counterparty clearing of derivatives. He has published over 30 articles in professional publications and is the author of four books. Mr Pirrong has consulted widely, and his clients have included electric utilities, major commodity traders, processors and consumers, and commodity exchanges around the world.

Karl Whelan has been Professor of Economics at University College Dublin since 2007. Previously, Professor Whelan worked for the Central Bank of Ireland, gaining extensive experience of the European monetary system, including detailed knowledge of the operations of the European Central Bank. Prior to that, he worked for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington DC from 1996 to 2002. He has conducted research in a wide range of areas such as macroeconomics, international trade and financial economics and has published articles in many of the world's leading economics. Professor Whelan is a member of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee panel of monetary experts. He contributes to debate on macroeconomic and financial issues via Twitter and blog posts.

Anne Stevenson-Yang co-founded J Capital Research in late 2007 and is J Capital's Research Director. She was formerly co-founder of a group of online media businesses called Blue Bamboo Ventures and also founded and operated a CRM software company, Clarity Data Systems, and a publishing company whose flagship magazine is City Weekend. With over 25 years in China, Ms Stevenson-Yang has also worked as an industry analyst and trade advocate. She authored the recent China Alone: China's Emergence and Potential Return to Isolation, arguing that China historically repeats a cycle of expansion and retreat.

Russell Norman is a restaurateur.  Over the last 20 years he has worked in many of London’s landmark restaurants as a waiter, bartender, maître d’, general manager and operations director.  In 2014 he presented The Restaurant Man, a six-part prime-time documentary for BBC2.  His second book SPUNTINO - Comfort Food, New York Style will be published in September 2015 and his first book POLPO - A Venetian Cookbook (of Sorts) is published by Bloomsbury and was voted Waterstones Book of the Year 2012. In 2009 he founded an independent restaurant company with his best friend and has since opened eight restaurants in central London including Polpo, Spuntino and Mishkin’s.  

Robert Jenkins, FSIP, is a former banker, fund manager and regulator. He is currently a teacher, board director and public policy advocate. Mr Jenkins spent 16 years running bank trading rooms followed by 18 years leading asset management organizations. At Citibank he headed trading and sales in Dubai, Bahrain, Switzerland, and Japan.

From 2009 until his appointment to the Bank of England, he was CEO and Managing Partner of Combinatorics Capital, a NY based global-macro investment partnership. Mr Jenkins Chaired the Investment Management Association of the UK and co-Chaired, together with the Chancellor, a high level group focusing on the future of the asset management industry in Britain. He served as a founding member of the Financial Policy Committee of the Bank of England. Mr Jenkins is currently Adjunct Professor, Finance at London Business School and Chairman of the AQR Asset Management Institute at LBS.  He is a Senior Fellow at Better Markets and a Governor of the CFA Institute. He is a frequent contributor to the financial press.  In 1997, he moved to F&C Asset Management, plc where he served for 12 years – first as CEO and then as Chairman. In 1992, Mr Jenkins moved from the sell side to the buy side. He served as Chief Operating Officer for Credit Suisse Asset Management’s activities in the UK, Central and Eastern Europe, and prior to that was Chief Investment Officer and Head of the asset management business of Credit Suisse in Japan.

Charlene Chu is Senior Partner of Autonomous Research Asia.  Prior to joining Autonomous in 2014, she worked for eight years as a Senior Director in the Financial Institutions Group at Fitch Ratings in Beijing, where she oversaw the credit ratings of Chinese financial institutions, and published research on macro-financial developments in China. Before joining Fitch Ratings, she served as a Senior Analyst in the Emerging Markets & International Affairs group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where she focused on financial sector reform and monetary policy development in China and other Asian countries. Ms Chu holds both an MBA and a MA in International Relations from Yale University.

David Bicchetti is a Swiss economist. He joined UNCTAD's macroeconomists team in 2010 where he focuses his interest on the interactions between financial markets and information flows and their influence on price discovery mechanisms. His research on carry trade and investment strategies and their effect on exchange rate fluctuations and trade has contributed to UNCTAD's support to the G-20 discussions.  He is one of the authors of the first study looking at intraday correlations between commodity and stock index derivatives. One of his latest studies in collaboration with ETHZ has been labelled a breakthrough in research into the formation of futures prices by commentators.

He is also a member of the investment committee and of the board of a UN personnel fund, managing several hundreds of millions of US dollars. Before joining the United Nations in 2009, he worked as a researcher at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne and is the co-author of several studies on post-Kyoto protocol mechanisms and their impacts on the world economy. He also worked in the banking industry as a performance and risk analyst for institutional and private investors. 

Frances Coppola spent many years working for various banks as a project manager, business analyst and systems specialist. She turned to financial writing in 2010 and now writes professionally for a range of publications including Forbes and the FT. She is the author of the Coppola Comment finance & economics blog and a frequent commentator on matters economic and financial on TV, radio and online news media. She is also a professional singer and an Associate of the Royal College of Music.

Luigi Zingales is the Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and a Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute. In 2005-6 and again in 2014-15 he held the prestigious Taussig Research Professorship at Harvard University.  In 2014 he served as President of the American Finance Association.  In 2013 he was named founding director of the Centre for Economic Analysis of the PCAOB.  In 2012 he wrote A Capitalism for the People, which the Financial Times described as a "stimulating essay on the nature of American capitalism and the issues that will determine the pace of America’s relative decline."

His research interests span from corporate governance to financial development, from political economy to the economic effects of culture. He has published extensively in the major economics and financial journals. In 2004, Mr Zingales received the Bernacer Prize for the best European young financial economist.  Prior to this In 2003 he wrote with Raghu Rajan a book entitled Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, which has been acclaimed as "one of the most powerful defenses of the free market ever written”.  

At the beginning of 2015, Maneesh Juneja was ranked 10^th most influential in Wearable Technology, and 8^th most influential in Digital Health. His insights don’t just cover his own experiences with emerging technologies, but also the potential implications of these technologies across society. One area of his research covers personal data marketplaces, a radical future where consumers sell their data, which may herald the dawn of a new economy. In 2013, he gave a talk at TEDxO’Porto on his radical vision of 7bn Citizen Scientists, and also attended FutureMed at Singularity University, in Silicon Valley.

In 2012, he left the security of his career at GlaxoSmithKline, to set up his own consultancy, MJ Analytics. In the same year, he also founded the Health 2.0 London Chapter, which has since become the UK’s largest grassroots health tech community.  In a career spanning 20 years, Mr Juneja has worked with data to improve decision-making across a number of industries. From supporting the Whitehall study at University College London, managing the Tesco database at DunnHumby, and most recently, working with the world’s largest U.S. & European patient databases at GSK R&D.

Kit Juckes is a Global Fixed Income Strategist at Societe Generale, where he has worked since 2010. He has worked as an economist and strategist (in the mistaken belief it pays more) covering FX, interest rates and credit markets for a variety of firms since the mid 1980s. Most recently, he was Chief Economist at The ECU Group, a London-based currency management boutique. 

Seth Kleinman is Managing Director and Global Head of Energy Strategy, covering all aspects of global oil and gas markets. His team advises clients, whether corporate, institutional investors or hedge funds on Energy-related investments across all geographies and time horizons. Prior to joining Citi in 2011, he was Head of Oil Analysis for Glencore in London, and prior to that he worked at Hess Energy Trading and Morgan Stanley in New York and PFC Energy in Washington DC.

George Magnus is an independent economist and commentator, Associate at the China Centre, Oxford University, and an external senior adviser to UBS. He was the Chief Economist, and then Senior Economic Adviser at UBS Investment Bank from 1995-2012. during which time he served for four years as the Chair of the Investment Committee of the pension and life assurance fund. He had previously laboured with SG Warburg, Laurie Milbank/Chase Securities, and Bank of America.

Mr Mangus notably predicted a ‘Minsky Moment’ in 2007 prior to the financial crisis, and is closely followed nowadays for his insights and observations about China, amongst other things. He is a regular contributor to the Financial Times, Prospect Magazine, BBC TV and radio, Bloomberg TV and other outlets. His written work and a blog can be found on his website at www.georgemagnus.com. His first book, The Age of Aging, investigated the effects of our unique experience of demographic change on the global economy. Later he authored Uprising: Will emerging markets shape or shake the world economy? which examines the rise of China and other major emerging markets, and questioned controversially the widely accepted narra-tive that China was destined to rule the world.

John Hitchcox, is a property industry pioneer.  As Chairman and Co-Founder of YOO, alongside celebrated designer Philippe Starck, Mr Hitchcox has built YOO into one of the world’s leading global residential and hotel design companies, since its launch in 1999. A truly global company YOO now operates in 34 countries, 57 cities, with over 82 projects within their portfolio. YOO offers developers interior design, architecture, marketing and branding services to create extraordinary and inspiring living spaces.  YOO continues to bring a unique and innovative approach to designing branded developments to the international property market with residences including YOO Panama in Panama City, Icon Brickell in Miami, Barkli Virgin House in Moscow, Lodha Fiorenza in Mumbai, The Mira Moon Hotel in Hong Kong, Acqua Iguazu in Manila, Downtown – 15 Broad Street in New York, Malecon in Lima, NW8 in London and YOO Berlin. The recently launched Vertical Living is the latest addition to the YOO produced publications and provides an insight into the extraordinary world of ‘vertical villages’ and how they are redefining city living.  His first book, Interiors by YOO was launched in 2009 and was published in four languages and sold in excess of 30,000 copies internationally. Mr Hitchcox is passionate about sustainable energy and in 2012 launched YOO Energy to promote single and multiple wind turbines to landowners.  He is also an ambassador for Whole World Water.

Since March 2011 Chris Cook has been a Senior Research Fellow at University College London developing networked, decentralised, and hence resilient, 21st century market architecture and 'Open Capital' market instruments.

Mr Cook is a strategic market consultant, architect and commentator and has given evidence in person to the UK Parliament's Treasury Select Committee in respect of oil market regulation, and in 2014 became probably the first Westerner to present (in relation to strategic energy policy) to Iran's Expediency Council.  He has been involved in the regulation and development of markets & financial instruments for almost 30 years, for six years to 1996 as a director of the International Petroleum Exchange, where he was responsible for the UK Natural Gas 'Balancing Point' contract design and market mechanism, and the introduction of innovations such as Exchange of Futures for Swaps and Trading at Settlement. Since then, Chris has been working at the intersection of markets and the Internet and the ongoing transition from a market paradigm of energy as a commodity to energy as a service.

Since the launch of FIA EPTA in June 2011, Mark Spanbroek has served as Vice Chairman and a member of the Executive Committee. From June 2012 till March 2014 he also served as the Secretary General of FIA EPTA.  He Chairs the CME Europe Board as an independent non-executive and has been an independent non-executive member of the Board of Aquis Exchange since 2013 and is also a former member of the Expert Group on Market Infrastructures (EGMI) and of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange Council.

Until July 2013 Mr Spanebroek remained a partner with Getco Holding LLC but retired from his day to day activities at Getco in 2011 after serving for nine years at Getco Europe Ltd. and Getco LLC as head of Business Development and Market Structure. His role included setting up Getco in Europe as well as educating exchanges, platforms and regulators globally of changes in technology, improvement of the post-trade arena  and other critical infrastructure components. He was also one of the main initiators behind the launch of CHI-X Europe.   Before joining Getco in 2002, he was a Director of Global Derivatives at Van Der Moolen Holding N.V. where he began in 1988. During this period, he actively traded on many open outcry trading floors in option pits and was one of the early participants on the first electronic trading market Eurex. He began his career as a government bond trader at AMRO bank in 1986. Besides trading he played a leading role in the expansion of the firm at the NYSE and many other joint ventures and take overs.  Mr Spanbroek holds a bachelor degree in business economics, accounting and finance at the Higher Business School in Amsterdam and graduated from theInsead Advanced Management Programme in 1999.

Richard Purcell leads the Technical Marketing and Insights team at Vitality, working with the business to help identify and deliver exciting new innovations in the life and health insurance market. Some of Vitality’s new developments include using wearable devices to help people be more active and control their own insurance premiums, plus the launch of an app based GP service making it more convenient to see a doctor. 

Prior to Vitality Mr Purcell worked at Pension Corporation, an innovative provider of insurance to pension schemes, and Towers Watson, consulting to a number of insurance companies. He became a Fellow of the Institute & Faculty of Actuaries in 2008 and is proactively engaged in the actuarial profession, sitting on a number of its committees. He is also a Features Editor at The Actuary Magazine, and has written articles on how insurers can embrace new technologies to create products that better meet customer needs.

Euan Davis is a Senior Director at Cognizant Technology Solutions. In this capacity, he leads the Center for the Future Work in Europe. The Center’s mandate examines how work is changing in response to the emergence of new technologies, new business practices and new ways of working.  Mr Davis joined Cognizant in 2013 bringing over 20 years experience in the ICT industry. Prior to joining Cognizant, he held senior analyst, advisory and leadership positions at Forrester Research, IDC and the Corporate Executive Board (CEB). 

A respected speaker and thinker, Mr Davis has guided many Fortune 500 firms into the dynamics surrounding business and technology with his thought provoking research and advisory skills. In his role for Cognizant, he ensures that the Center provides original research and analysis into the work trends and dynamics playing out in Europe and collaborates with a wide range of business and technology thinkers to understand how the future of work will look.  He graduated from Portsmouth University.

Ed Mead is the Executive Director at Douglas & Gordon, an independent 18 office company operating in London.  He is a TV and Radio regular with a monthly slot on the LBC Money Hour with Clive Bull, and also has a column with CityAM.  Earlier on in his career he wrote for 10 years for the Telegraph as the Agent Provocateur and for the Sunday Times as their property expert.  Mr Mead sits on the Board of the Property Ombudsman and the Board of OnTheMarket.com.  He has been in agency since 1979 and is a fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.  In addition Mr Mead is a Trustee of the Hep C Trust.

Will Page is the Director of Economics at Spotify, the digital music streaming service. He was previously the Chief Economist at PRS for Music. There he published pioneering work on the Long Tail and Radiohead's In Rainbows – where he famously asked if legal free could compete with illegal free. Since joining Spotify, he has presented new insights on the Anatomy of a Hit ​in a digital age covering artists like Lorde, Mr Probz and Meghan Trainor. His work has been covered in the Financial Times, The Economist and all major broadsheets and blogs. To date, Spotify has launched in 58 markets around the world, and recently announced​ ​60m active users and over 15m paying subscribers. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts.

Simon Stringer has been a Research Mathematician at Oxford University for over 20 years. He has worked in various areas of computer modelling, including control systems, computational aerodynamics, mathematical epidemiology, and theoretical neuroscience. For the last 10 years he has led the Oxford Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence, which is based within the Department of Experimental Psychology. The Centre houses a team of computer modellers, who are developing simulations of various aspects of brain function, including vision, spatial processing, behaviour, language and consciousness. Dr Stringer's goal is to understand the neurobiological basis of consciousness and replicate this in machines. 

Rhydian Lewis founded RateSetter in 2010 having witnessed the continued failure of the financial system to act in the interests of customers.  He saw an opportunity to narrow the spread between what investors earn and what creditworthy borrowers pay, and deliver greater value in a simple way.  In the RateSetter market the rates are set by investors and borrowers, not by committees or banks.

Mr Lewis has pioneered many ‘firsts’ in marketplace lending, such as the Provision Fund concept.  RateSetter’s Provision Fund has ensured that after lending more than £1bn over five years, no individual RateSetter investor has lost a penny – a unique feat amongst major peer-to-peer lending platforms.

Mr Lewis graduated from Bristol University with a double first in Modern Languages. Prior to founding RateSetter, Rhydian spent six years at investment management firm Lazard.

Dr Tristan Fletcher heads up the machine learning team at Thought Machine - a start up revolutionizing personal finance with AI - and is an expert in applying state of the art machine learning techniques in the practical domain: from algorithmic trading, portfolio management, supply chain optimization and medical research to fine wine pricing at Invinio.

Adam Hyman is the founder of CODE. CODE is an innovative media brand and consultancy working in the hospitality industry. As well as consulting on F&B strategies for real estate companies, CODE publishes The CODE Bulletin weekly e-newsletter and The CODE app – an online platform with exclusive offers for hospitality professionals. CODE also publishes a quarterly print newspaper. 

Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal is a Professor in Banking and Finance Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) at Queen Mary University of London. Prior to joining CCLS he was a Senior Lecturer in Financial Law and the Academic Director at the Centre for Financial and Management Studies (SOAS), University of London and the School of Law, University of Warwick. He taught in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in various Schools of Law and Business Schools in the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, France and Argentina as well as in professional training courses in Africa, Asia and Europe. He has acted as a Sovereign Debt Expert for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Senior Insolvency Expert for the World Bank / IFC and as a consultant to several multilateral institutions in Washington DC and Europe, Central Banks and Sovereign States as well as in several international transactions with Law Firms. He specialises in international finance and insolvency law. He is the author/editor of seven books and has extensively published in peer-reviewed journals. He sits in the editorial/advisory board of several law journals in the UK and US and is a member of national and international institutions and associations specialised in comparative commercial and insolvency law.

Steven Englander is Managing Director and Global Head of G10 Strategy at Citi. He returned to Citi in April of 2010. In May 2014, the Citi FX Strategy team was named the #1 FX Strategy team in the Euromoney poll on G10 Research vs. #2, #3, #6 and #11 in previous years.

Dr Englander publishes frequently in CitiFX Strategy publications and is a frequent consultant to Citi's internal and external clients on how macroeconomic policy, regulation and asset markets affect FX markets. His expertise is on reserves management, earnings repatriation, capital flows, and global imbalances; his research in these areas is frequently quoted by academics, policymakers and investors. In recent months he has written extensively on Bitcoin and digital currencies. Prior to rejoining Citi, Dr Englander was Chief Foreign Exchange Strategist for the Americas at Barclays Capital. Previously he spent eight years with Citibank/Salomon Smith Barney where he was Global Currency Economist based in London. Citi was ranked #1 in currency economics and long-term strategy every year that he occupied that position. Before moving to the private sector, he spent four years at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as the Principal Economist in the Economic Prospects Division covering preparations for European Monetary Union among other assignments.

His research on monetary union, labour markets and productivity was presented to senior policymakers at meetings of the OECD's Working Party #1 and #3. Dr Englander's career also includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he was Senior Research Officer and Head of the Domestic Research Department. There he was responsible for the New York Fed's US economic research, its economic forecasts and was also the briefing officer to the President of the New York fed prior to FOMC meetings. Dr Englander is frequently invited to discuss currency and economic developments on television and radio. Dr Englander received his PhD from Yale University and his BA from McGill University.

Sebastian Mallaby is Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An experienced journalist and public speaker, Mr Mallaby has served as a contributing editor for the Financial Times and as a columnist and editorial board member at the Washington Post. His interests cover a wide variety of domestic and international issues, including financial markets, the implications of the rise of newly emerging powers, and the intersection of economics and international relations. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic Monthly.

Mr Mallaby is currently writing a biography of the former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan. His previous book, More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, was released in June 2010. New York Times columnist David Brooks has called it "superb."  More Money Than God was the recipient of the 2011 Loeb Prize, a finalist in the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs prize, and a New York Times bestseller.  Mr Mallaby's earlier books are The World's Banker (2004), a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn, which was named as an "Editor's Choice" by the New York Times; and After Apartheid (1992), which was named by the New York Times as a "Notable Book." Mr Mallaby’s Foreign Affairs essay on failed states in 2002 was cited by commentators in the New York Times, Financial Times, and Time Magazine. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist: once for editorials on Darfur and once for a series on economic inequality. 

Before joining the Post in 1999, Mr Mallaby spent thirteen years with The Economist. While at The Economist, he worked in London, where he wrote about foreign policy and international finance; in Africa, where he covered Nelson Mandela's release and the collapse of apartheid; and in Japan, where he covered the breakdown of the country's political and economic consensus. Between 1997 and 1999, Mr Mallaby was the Economist's Washington bureau chief and wrote the magazine's weekly Lexington column on American politics and foreign policy. Mr Mallaby was educated at Oxford. He graduated in 1986 with a First Class degree in modern history.

Indy Johar is the co-founder of 00 [Project00.cc].  On behalf of 00, he has co-founded multiple social ventures from Impact Hub Westminster to Impact Hub Birmingham and the HubLaunchpad and has also co-led research projects such as The Compendium for the Civic Economy, whilst supporting several 00 explorations/experiments including the wikihouse.cc, opendesk.cc.  Mr Johar is an Advisor to the Earth Security Initiative and a director of WikiHouse Foundation and Civic Systems Laboratory.  Prior to this he was the Director of the Global Impact Hub Association and Impact Hub Islington [the original Impact Hub in the Hub Network].  Mr Johar has taught and lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin Architectural Association, University College London and Princeton. He has given lectures and led discussions on various issues, including how strategic design meets policy and a new economy in various forums from Demos, Centre of Social Justice, Helsinki Design Lab, European Parliament, LSE, Royal Academy, Royal Society of the Arts and Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. He has written for many national and international journals on the future of design, social systems and venturing. He is a Fellow of the RSA, Demos Associate, Respublica Fellow, JRF Anti-Poverty Strategy Programme Advisory Group member, member of the Mayor of London's SME Working Group and Senior Innovation Associate at the Young Foundation.

Gabriel Sterne is Head of Global Macro Research at Oxford Economics where he and his team work to deliver independent research pertinent to financial markets, covering anything from secular stagnation to simulating oil shocks, and sometimes Greece.  He learned all about the IMF’s textbook approach to crisis resolution during a quiet spell at the IMF during 2004-2006. The divergence of IMF practice from the textbook approach during the Greek crisis left him agitated, and he has become one of the leading private sector voices during the Eurocrisis. His critiques of IMF policy have been featured frequently in Alphaville for the past few years. He is keen to point out, however, that some of his best friends work at the Fund.

Mr Sterne most recently spent four years at Investment Banking boutique Exotix, where his work focussed on crises in Dubai, Egypt, Ukraine, Greece and Cyprus. If only gardening leave were longer his long-drafted book on Greece and the IMF crisis would be finished by now. Prior to this he worked most of his career at the Bank of England.

John Egan is currently a Director at Anthemis Group in London. He has previously worked on digital strategy with some of the world’s most prominent financial institutions and governments and has won a number of national and international entrepreneurship awards. 

Prior to his current role, he was the Head of Innovation at Lafferty Group and before that he was the CEO of Swiss Network Technology firm Sandbox where he oversaw the launch of 20 new bases in Latin America and Africa as well as the expansion of the organisations anthropological and economic laboratory where he initiated a digital economy environment, digital currency programme and created the mobile society concept.

Mr Egan currently sits on the University College Dublin Innovation Academy Board of Studies, whilst also being faculty at the International Academy of Retail Banking and an advisor at Lafferty group. He has also authored or contributed to numerous books and reports on Innovation theory and the future of retail banking. You can find out more about him at iamjohnegan.me or follow him @iamjohnegan

Matt King’s team are responsible for forming views and advising clients on the full spectrum of credit, across high-grade, high-yield, leveraged loans, and structured bond markets. The majority of clients are investors but he also deals with issuers and regulators on everything from market direction to valuation to risk management. Mr King is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has published extensively on credit markets over the past two decades. Some of his most widely referenced pieces include Are the Brokers Broken? (which was published two weeks before Lehman’s bankruptcy); Buy the Bubbles, Sell the Bath; and How Much Debt is Too Much Debt? Prior to joining Citi in 2003, he was Head of European Credit Strategy at JP Morgan. Mr King is a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he read Social and Political Sciences.

Alexander Barkawi is founder and director of the Council on Economic Policies (CEP) – an international economic policy think tank for sustainability focused on fiscal, monetary and trade policy. Prior to his decision to build up CEP, he was the Managing Director of SAM Indexes and thus responsible for developing the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) into a key reference point for sustainability investing. Before joining SAM, he took the lead in internationalizing the activities of oikos – an organization that promotes sustainability in teaching and research of economics and management worldwide. Originally started as an initiative in St. Gallen, Switzerland, oikos today comprises more than 40 chapters on four continents. Mr Barkawi continues to be engaged in the organization as president of its board of trustees. He is a graduate in economics (M.A.) of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he also wrote his PhD thesis on Social Change in Egypt in the 1990s.

Leander Bindewald’s field of expertise are Complementary Currencies and he manages the international Community Currencies in Action (CCIA) project for the Finance and Business Team. With CCIA, NEF aims to establish greater coherence in theory and practice across this fast developing field of socio-economic tools, support the dissemination and innovation of currency solutions in the public and third sector across Europe, develop an evaluation framework for Complementary and Community Currencies and provide support and training for existing and new currency initiatives.  Prior to joining NEF in July 2012 he has worked as a freelance consultant in many European countries and the Americas, focusing on participatory processes, social entrepreneurship and primarily complementary currencies.

Mr Bindewald holds a master’s degree in Neurobiology (Diplom Biologe) and a Master of Arts (Magister Artium) in Philosophy and Business from the University of Freiburg in Germany, his country of origin. Having lived and worked in all five corners of the world before moving to London to join NEF, he is still on the road a lot, meeting CCIA partners and currency aficionados across Europe and keenly exploring the pockets of wild outdoors across the British Isles.

Giles Andrews is CEO of Zopa, the world’s first and Europe’s leading P2P lending business, which is disrupting retail financial services by providing better value to consumers.  Zopa has now lent more than £850m and reached approximately 2% market share in new personal loans in the UK.  It has also been voted ’Most Trusted Personal Loan Provider’ in the Moneywise Customer Awards for the past five years in a row and won Moneyfacts “Best Personal Loan Provider” and “Best Customer Service” (in all of financial services) awards in 2014 and 2015.

Mr Andrews co-founded Zopa in 2004.  Prior to this he ran his own consultancy business whose clients included Tesco and Tesco Personal Finance and which also provided start up advice and early stage funding for new businesses.  He spent the first 10 years of his career pursuing his passion for all things automotive.  This included co-founding Caverdale in 1992, a start-up taken to a £250m revenue motor retailer and sold in 1997.  Mr Andrews holds an MBA from INSEAD.

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Aral Balkan is the founder and lead designer of ind.ie (https://ind.ie/) a social enterprise creating independent alternatives to Spyware 2.0.  His work protects fundamental freedoms, human rights, and democracy by creating independent consumer technologies that don’t spy on you. He is the author of the Ind.ie Manifesto (https://ind.ie/manifesto).  He is currently working on coding the core of the Ind.ie platform, a beautiful distributed social network called Heartbeat.  Mr Balkan blogs at aralbalkan.com and tweets at [@aral](https://twitter.com/aral).

Christian Odendahl is Chief Economist at the Centre for European Reform, where he works on European macroeconomics and political economy, as well as Germany. Before joining the CER, he worked as a senior economist at Roubini Global Economics in London on the eurozone, the ECB and Germany. Until 2012, he was a regular contributor to The Economist’s Free Exchange blog. He also has worked on the editorial team of The Economist as a Marjorie Deane financial journalism fellow, and short stints at the consultancy Frontier Economics, the German state development agency GTZ in Accra, Ghana, and the German Ministry of Economics. Mr Odendahl holds a PhD in economics from Stockholm University.

David Galbraith is a designer and internet entrepreneur, as well as a qualified architech. He co-founded San Francisco incubator, MRL Ventures (which created Yelp), Moreover,com, the first news aggregator (acquired by Verisign) and Realtime Anywhere (the first internet company in London's Shoreditch in 1994). He also created the visual bookmarking concept behind Pinterest and co-authored RSS.

As City Planning Officer for the City of London, Mr Rees led the planning and regeneration of this world business and financial centre from 1985 to 2014.  He lectures throughout the world and makes frequent media appearances on urban planning and design topics.  He is a founder member and director of the British Council for Offices and received their President’s Award in 2003.  In 2015 he was created a CBE in the New Year Honours List.

Mr Rees received the 2014 Property Award from the College of Estate Management; Honorary Membership of the Architectural Association; and an Honorary Doctorate from London South Bank University.  He received the 2013 Estates Gazette Award for the Outstanding Contribution to Property and was included in The Debrett’s 500 list of the most inspiring and influential people in Britain today. In the same year he also delivered the opening presentations at the CTBUH International Conference, Height and Heritage, held in the City of London and at the IACIE Convention in Tel Aviv.  In 2012 he was awarded an honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects, for his services to architecture and was the subject of a BBC profile on the The Culture Show. 

Dr MacIntosh has been a public servant for nearly 30 years, as a soldier, scientist and policy advisor. He has had a leading role in four Machinery of Government changes in the national security arena and been on secondment to the Home Office and the Cabinet Office. Dr MacIntosh has fulfilled several advisory roles for Cabinet Ministers and senior decision-takers, in the UK and abroad. He has deployed and built teams that have worked in operational theatres, advising the leadership of many organisations facing the challenge of deep and broad transformation – in and out of conflict.

In spring 2001, he co-authored the concept of Resilience to Crises for the UK Government, which anticipated the cascade of economic crises triggered since 2007 and their national security impact. This policy work is built on government research programmes Dr MacIntosh led in collaboration with US colleagues during the 1990s addressing the evolving cyber environment. He continues to lead research aiming to better support decision takers facing systemic risk and radical uncertainty in networks. Dr MacIntosh is the second UCL Provost’s Venture Research Fellow focused on measuring the value of learning in time. This research informed his role as Special Advisor to the Public Administration Select Committee’s future challenges report (March 2015).

Themis joined Wealth Management as Head of the European Investment Office in February 2014. Prior to that, Themis spent 20 years at UBS Investment Bank, including 15 as an equity analyst, during which time he was often ranked as one of the top analysts in his sector. In his last five years at the IB, Themis worked in Research Management, heading up European Product Management, a role which included chairing the Investment Review Committee. During that time he also headed up the Emerging European Research team & managed a number of Developed Europe sector teams. Themis holds a PhD degree in Chemistry from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and an MBA from the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business.

Simone Cicero is an Engineer, Strategist and Designer: a system thinker mixing co-design, design thinking and a deep understanding of the mechanics of digital transformation. He investigates change from the inside by being part of the global Think-Do-Tank OuiShare of which he is a Core Connector (see ouishare.net).

Mr Cicero is also one of the leading European expert on open, p2p business models and the creator of the Platform Design Toolkit, a set of tools to design for communities.  In addition he is a partner in Pentagrowth (seepentagrowth.com) and former Co-Chair of Open Source Hardware Summit 2014.  He is also a blogger and public speaker and often speaks about innovation, disruption, resilience and ecosystems.

Henry Farrell is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He has previously been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, assistant professor at George Washington University and the University of Toronto, and a senior research fellow at the Max-Planck Project Group in Bonn, Germany. He works on a variety of topics, including trust, the politics of the Internet and international and comparative political economy. His recent book, The Political Economy of Trust: Interests, Institutions and Inter-Firm Cooperation, was published in 2009 by Cambridge University Press. In addition he has authored or co-authored 25 academic articles, as well as several book chapters and numerous non-academic publications.

David Levy is a widely respected economist, successful former hedge fund manager, consultant to institutional investors and nonfinancial companies, publisher of the nation’s oldest economic forecasting publication (The Levy Forecast), and the world's foremost expert in applying the Profits Perspective to economic analysis with over 35 years of forecasting experience. He is one of a select group of economists to have successfully forecasted the financial crises that accompanied each of the last three recessions and to have profited on those forecasts. The third generation family member to use the Profits Perspective in economic analysis, Mr Levy has given briefings, consultations, and testimony to members of Congress, administration officials, and Federal Reserve governors. He was appointed by former President Bill Clinton to the Commission to Study Capital Budgeting in 1997 and was also selected for the federal government’s Competitiveness Policy Council Infrastructure Subcouncil.

Mr Levy has spoken before a great variety of audiences, including congressional gatherings on Capitol Hill, the National Press Club, the Detroit Economic Club, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Financial Executives International, CFO Conferences, Bloomberg and Institutional Investor forums, and a number of elite colleges and universities.  He became the director of the Levy Institute Forecasting Center when it was established in 1991 and served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of The Jerome Levy Economics Institute of Bard College from 1986 until 2001, at which time Levy Forecasts separated from the Institute and returned to the for-profit sector as The Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, LLC.   Mr Levy is the author of many articles and the co-author, with S Jay Levy, of Profits and the Future of American Society, published by HarperCollins (1983). He graduated from Williams College Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in mathematics and received an M.B.A. from the Columbia Business School.

Spyros Skouras is Associate Professor of International Finance at the Athens University of Economics & Business and has previously held academic positions at Cambridge University, the Santa Fe Institute and Imperial College. He is also a founder of Scientific Investments, a firm which advises investors who allocate to funds using sophisticated scientific methods and which also develops proprietary high frequency trading strategies. In academic research, he has studied market microstructure and high frequency trading and has consulted  for the UK Treasury on MifID 2 regulations in relation to computer trading.

Paul McNamara is the lead manager on emerging market bond and currency long only and hedge fund strategies for GAM Holding A/G. Mr McNamara joined GAM following its acquisition of the fixed income and foreign exchange specialist, Augustus, in May 2009 where he started managing most of the funds he runs to date. Mr McNamara joined Augustus (then Julius Baer Investments Limited) in 1997 from the Export Credits Guarantee department of the UK Government Economic Service, where he was an economist. He began his career as a lecturer. Mr McNamara holds an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics. He is based in London.

As a curator, art consultant and gallerist, Amelie von Wedel has run an exhibition programme that includes the first UK exhibitions of ZengFanzhi, Ai Weiwei and Theaster Gates to name just a few, as well as many critically acclaimed themed exhibitions. Collaborative museum projects include the commission of a Peter Liversidge performance at the Whitechapel gallery in London among other performance art commissions.  Wedel Art Advisory works with and creates tailored strategies for corporate and private clients on collecting, philanthropy and implementation of foundations and educational outreach programmes.

Ms von Wedel is serving as a director of the Give A Future Foundation, mitigating the effects of poverty through education and economic development. In 2012 she joined Intelligence Squared Group as Group Executive Director and before this in 2009, she Co-Founded Intelligence Squared Asia with Yana Peel.  With Ute Grosenick, she Co-Edited a survey book on Chinese contemporary art, published by DuMont and future book projects are in planning. She has also lectured extensively around the world on contemporary art.  Before setting up Wedel Art Advisory in 2006, she worked for various high profile art institutions and galleries, including the Zeughaus museum in Berlin and Kunstmanagement Judith Betzler in Munich, as well as running the education and exhibition programme of The Red Mansion Foundation.

Anders Petterson is a leading authority on the art market, and the author of the annual Hiscox Online Art Trade Report and the co-author of the annual Deloitte Art & Finance report. He is the Founder and Managing Director of ArtTactic Ltd, a London-based art market research and advisory company set up in 2001. Anders Petterson is lecturing on the topic of ‘Art as an asset class’ for CASS Business School, Sotheby’s Institute and Christie’s Education in London. He is also a Board Member of Professional Advisors to the International Art Market (PAIAM).

Yann Ranchere brings in-depth knowledge of the trends shaping financial services innovation as well as the startups addressing those and has international experience in a broad range of financial services. As the Finance Director of Anthemis Group he is in charge of all financial matters for the group and its various entities. He also contributes to the Principal Investment activities, with the sourcing and review of potential investments. He is the author of the Tekfin blog and @tek_fin twitter account. Before joining Anthemis, Mr Ranchere worked as a consultant at KurtSalmon in New York in various sectors: retail banking, private banking, capital markets, custody and fund administration and lead the financial services innovation activity in the US. Prior to this he worked in Luxembourg and France.

Yazid Sharaiha is head of Implementation Strategies, Norges Bank Investment Management, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Finance, Imperial College Business School. His career spans both academia and industry. Prior to his current role, he was Managing Director and global head of the Quantitative and Derivative Strategies at Morgan Stanley. He was previously a University Lecturer at Imperial College, London.

Daniela Gabor is associate professor in economics at UWE Bristol. She has published on central banking, on the governance of global banks and on shadow banking/ repo markets. Her latest publications include  a co-edited book with Charles Goodhart, Jakob Vestegaard, and Ismail Erturk entitled Central Banking at Crossroads (Anthem Press, 2014) and journal articles  on the European Financial Transaction Tax on shadow banking and The (impossible) repo trinity: from fiscal to financial dominance.  She leads two research grants, one on Shadow Money funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and another on the Capital Markets Union in Europe, funded by the Foundation for European Progressive Studies. She tweets @DanielaGabor and blogs at critical finance.org

Lars Christensen is an internationally renowned Danish economist specialised in international economy, Emerging Markets and monetary policy. He has over 20 years’ experience in government and banking and is the founder and owner of Markets and Money Advisory and is a Senior Fellow at London’s Adam Smith Institute.

He is particularly known for having been Head of Emerging Markets Research at Danske Bank in Copenhagen. In this role he authored numerous path-breaking economic reports on particularly Central and Eastern Europe.  From 2006 - 2008 he co-authored a number of reports warning of a coming economic meltdown in Central and Eastern Europe and maybe most famously he co-authored the report Geyser Crisis in 2006, which correctly forecasted a major economic and financial crisis in Iceland.  Mr Christensen is also known for being an Africa Optimist and is a strong believer in what he calls the coming African growth miracle.

Mr Christensen is the author of the book Milton Friedman – en pragmatisk revolutionær (“Milton Friedman – a pragmatic revolutionary”) published in November 2002. He is internationally recognized as a specialist on the economic teachings of Milton Friedman and the history of monetary thought.  His blog The Market Monetarist has since it was started in 2011 become one of the leading international blogs on monetary policy. He has coined the name Market Monetarism.  Market Monetarists like Mr Christensen advocate that central banks should target the nominal GDP level (NGDP level targeting).  He is widely quoted by most international financials media – Financial Times, The Telegraph Bloomberg, Reuters, Dow Jones Newswire etc.  Mr Christensen previously worked for five years as an economic policy analyst at the Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs (1996-2001). He has a master degree in Economics from the University of Copenhagen.

Oliver Harvey is a currency strategist at Deutsche Bank where he has particular responsibility for pound sterling and quantitative indicators for FX markets. He conducts fundamental analysis of FX markets and advises clients on the risks and opportunities of currency markets. His work has focused on optimal currency area theory in the context of the UK economy, the risks to the UK's balance of payments and UK monetary policy. He holds a Bachelor of the Arts in history from Oxford University.

Cormac Leech is the lead banks and other financials analyst at Liberum. Over the last two years he has been actively involved in P2P helping some of the leading platforms raise both equity and debt capital.  Mr Leech has been a banks analyst for over 10 years spending time previously at JPMorgan and RBS. Prior to his time in equity research he worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey advising financial institutions and also has five years experience structuring fixed income derivatives at Citigroup. Mr Leech holds a first class honours degree in Mathematical Science from University College Dublin; an MSc in Computation from Oxford University; an MBA from INSEAD and is a CFA charterholder.

Dan joined FT Alphaville in September 2013, after stints on Lex and as the FT’s Investment Correspondent in New York, where he wrote about hedge funds, asset management and markets. Dan has also written for the Investors Chronicle, loitered in Citigroup’s equity research department, and has at one point or another carried furniture, sold kids books on doorsteps, and painted but not really decorated.

John Gapper is Chief Business Commentator and Associate Editor of the Financial Times. He writes an award-winning column on business, with a focus on finance, media and technology, and also contributes editorials and features, including regular Lunch with the FT interviews. Mr Gapper is one of the FT’s most senior and influential writers, having covered the financial and media industries, as well as employment issues, before taking up his current role in 2003. Between 2005 and 2012, he was based in the FT’s New York office, where he helped to lead its successful expansion in the US. He is the author of a novel, A Fatal Debt, a financial thriller published by Random House (2013), and co-author with Nick Denton of All That Glitters, and is working on a second. The winner of the 2013 Gerald Loeb award for commentary, he has received three annual Best in Business citations for his column from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. In the UK, he was named best business columnist in the 2011 Comment Awards and gained the technology writer and best communicator awards in the Business Journalist of the Year awards. Mr Gapper won an open scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford University and was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Before joining the FT in 1987, he trained as a journalist with Mirror Group Newspapers, working on papers including the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.

Cardiff is FT Alphaville's resident American-with-an-oddly-Welsh-name, and every team needs one of those. He joined Alphaville in November 2010 and writes primarily about the US economy. In prior lifetimes he was a Tampa native, Georgetown student, JPMorgan analyst, backpacking vagabond, and freelance hack.

Ravi Mattu is the Editorial Director for FT² at the Financial Times. Since joining the FT 15 years ago, he has spoken to CEOs, entrepreneurs, prime ministers as well as some of the world’s leading management thinkers. From the founders of Uber and Nest, to the CEOs of Microsoft and Vodafone, to the man who came up with virtual reality and Lady Gaga’s manager, Mr Mattu has interviewed some of the most creative people in business today. Through working with thought leaders in a variety of fields, he has developed unique observations on the topics of technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, global trends in business and the changing nature of the workplace. Mr Mattu joined the Financial Times in 2000 and has held a number of senior positions at the newspaper, including Editor of Business Life (the management section of the paper) and Acting Deputy Editor of the FT Weekend Magazine. He is a former editor of Special Reports (magazines and websites), during which time he edited a number of titles, including Mastering Management. He was also launch editor of FT Wealth. He took up his most recent position after being the FT's Technology Editor. Before joining the FT, Mr Mattu worked as assistant editor, acting deputy editor and senior editor at Prospect Magazine from 1997 to 2000.

John Authers was appointed Senior Investment Commentator for the Financial Times in 2011. He is based in New York. Mr Authers is also the writer and presenter of the Long View column and online broadcasts, which examine the effect of long-term market trends on investors. Previously, he was global Editor of Lex, the FT’s flagship daily opinion column, leading a team of columnists in New York, London and Hong Kong. Before that, he was the FT’s Investment Editor and principal commentator on markets and investments. Mr Authers joined the FT in 1990 and during his career has served as US Markets Editor, Mexico City Bureau Chief, US Banking Correspondent, Personal Finance Correspondent, Education and Local Government Correspondent and On Wall Street columnist. He won awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ Best in Business competition in 2008 and 2010 for his video reports on FT.com, and in 2009 was named the UK’s investment journalist of the year for national newspapers in the State Street Institutional Press Awards. He was named national newspaper education journalist of the year in 1994 by BTEC, and UTA’s National Journalist of the Year in 1992. Mr Authers is the author of the book, The Fearful Rise of Markets: Global Bubbles, Synchronized Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them in the Future (FT Press May 2010). He has also written The Victim’s Fortune -- Inside the Epic Battle Over the Debts of the Holocaust, co-authored with Richard Wolffe (Harper Collins 2002). Mr Authers received an MBA from Columbia Business School and an MS from Columbia School of Journalism as a Knight-Bagehot Fellow. In 2002, he won the Best of Knight-Bagehot Award for outstanding journalism by one of the 250 alumni of the program. He graduated from University College, Oxford, with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Before coming to Alphaville, Matt wrote about finance and economics for Bloomberg View and The Economist. He has also been a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where, among other things, he read every Fed transcript from 1987 through 2006, and an investment associate at Bridgewater. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

David joined Alphaville in 2012 and after a year and change in London was shunted off to cover Asia from Mumbai. Before that he sweated far less and spent some time studying economics, politics and journalism before joining the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow.

Martin Sandbu has been writing about economics for the FT since 2009, when he joined the paper as Economics Leader Writer. He now writes the FT's Free Lunch. Before joining the FT, he worked in academia and policy consulting. He has taught and carried out research at Harvard, Columbia and the Wharton School, and has advised governments and NGOs on natural resources and economic development. He is the author of two books, one on business ethics and one on the eurozone, and has degrees from Oxford and Harvard.

Philip Stafford became the FT trading room editor in November 2012, having been reporter since 2010. Before this appointment he was a senior UK companies reporter for the Financial Times, covering technology and telecoms. Previously, he moved from UK stock markets editor to the London markets editor in 2005. He was also companies and stock market reporter and web page editor for FTMarketwatch.  Before joining the FT in 2000, Mr Stafford worked at Lafferty Newswire writing online for top level finance executives. He also completed an internship with Bloomberg LP working on their news wire.  In 2007 he won the Techmark Awards, Technology Journalist of the Year.  Mr Stafford has an MA in International Relations from the University of Durham.

Jane Owen has run the FT’s House & Home section for five years.  She is a Yale Poynter Fellow 2015, a Chelsea Flower Show gold medallist, and was awarded the FT’s NED Diploma earlier this year.  Ms Owen has presented various prime time BBC and ITV TV series and written six books on gardens.

Cynthia O'Murchu is an Investigative Reporter at the Financial Times where she uses her data and public records research skills to produce stories across a variety of beats. Her particular interests are in money laundering, corruption and the use of offshore corporate vehicles in financial transactions. Previously, she was the FT’s Deputy Interactive Editor.

Joseph writes for Lex and Alphaville. He joined AV in March 2010, just as they were saying Greece was never going to default. He's since written about everything from the subsequent default of Greece to ECB policy -- and knows way too much about the pari passu clause in sovereign bonds.

Edwin Heathcote is the FT's Architecture and Design Critic.  He is an architect and designer and the author of around a dozen books including, most recently, The Meaning of Home.  He writes a monthly column for GQ Magazine and is a regular contributor for magazines including Icon, Apollo and l'Architecture d'Aujord Hui.  He is currently establishing an online archive of design writing.  

Katie Martin is the deputy head of fastFT, based in London. Katie joins from the Wall Street Journal, where she has been real-time markets editor since 2013. Prior to that, she was a foreign exchange reporter with Dow Jones Newswires. 

Kate Allen is the FT's Property Correspondent. She covers commercial and residential real estate in the UK and continental Europe, and international investment trends. She joined the FT in 2012 as a statistics journalist, covering global economic and financial data. She was previously the Editor of Social Housing magazine, which focuses on financial and business trends in Britain's affordable housing sector

Anjli Raval is the FT's Oil and Gas Correspondent based in London. Prior to joining the commodities team, she spent three years as a reporter and editor in New York. She covered the US consumer sector which included reporting on real estate, retail and hospitality. 

She has also been a reporter in the FT's New Delhi bureau and a writer for the beyondbrics and Energy Source blogs. Since joining the FT in 2009 she has been a companies, markets and breaking news reporter and an editor on the comment and analysis desk.