On our Economics and Finance programmes, you will be taught by people with a wealth of industry experience.
Academic Staff
Professor Alessio Sancetta
Professor of Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London.
He worked full time in the finance industry both for proprietary trading firms and tier one investment banks in London. His industry experience lies in intra-day trading of futures and European options, and high frequency algorithmic trading. He is an expert in the microstructures of several electronic platforms such as EBS, Reuters, CME and NASDAQ. He currently consults in the area of algorithmic trading and technology driven algorithms and liquidity provision. He is Head of Algorithmic Execution Intelligence at UBS, London, for Fx, futures, rates and credit and his finance research has been cited by the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, CNN amongst others.
He has been assistant editor of the Econometric Journal and has published in leading econometrics and statistics journals in a wide range of topics ranging from financial econometrics to theoretical statistics. His current research interests are on financial predictions, functional data analysis, volatility estimation, high dimensional estimation, and machine learning techniques. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University where he subsequently worked as post-doc and University Lecturer for a number of years. Further details on his biography previous to 2007 can also be found in Marquis Who's Who in the World 2007.
Dr Pierre-Olivier Fortin
Senior Lecturer, Royal Holloway, University of London
Dr Pierre-Olivier Fortin is a senior lecturer. After training as a mathematician in France, Dr Fortin joined JP Morgan. He worked for ten years in various roles, including electronic trading, derivative research for fixed income and credit departments. Then completed a PhD in finance and economics at the University of Durham and the European Business School in Wiesbaden. He worked for the Toulouse School of Economics before joining Royal Holloway as a lecturer in 2014.
Dr Fortin's primary research interests focus on the relationship of an asset price with credit availability. He investigates the link between asset price dynamic and the overall leverage of a financial system; another aspect is the link between real estate affordability and credit creation. Since the beginning of his academic career, Dr Fortin has been providing financial and strategic consultations for various companies, from hedge funds to industrial corporations.
Currently, Dr Fortin is also a director for Oristan DAC, the management company of Crystal funds (a credit opportunity fund).
email: Pierre-Olivier.Fortin@rhul.ac.uk
Regular Guest Speakers
With established links directly to professionals working in the finance industry in London, we have a number of guest speakers who are invited in to talk to students. These include Florent Boussié and Olivier Gozlan.
Florent Boussié
Global Head of Market Risk at Exness
Florent Boussié is Global Head of Market Risk at Exness, a top Market-maker Broker FinTech, after working at Natest Markets (formerly the Royal Bank of Scotland), as a Director in Market Risk heading Foreign Exchange and Emerging Markets. Previously, he covered a wide range of areas from Hybrid Derivatives Trading to the Credit Valuation Adjustment. He qualified as an Engineer in France, holds a post-graduate degree in Computer Science from Caen University and for many years traded financial derivatives for Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, Susquehanna and The Bank of New York.
Olivier Gozlan
Portfolio Manager of Crystal Fund
Mr. Gozlan is the Portfolio Manager of Crystal Fund since 2006. He is responsible for monitoring positions, identifying new opportunities, presenting trade ideas to the investment committee and trading. Prior to joining Crystal Fund, Mr. Gozlan spent 3 years at JPMorgan as a CDO structurer, responsible for various aspects from origination to execution of new CDO transactions, as well as restructuring seasoned transactions. He has also been involved in several research projects with focus on quantitative modelling and analysis.
