Thomas Book, Chief Executive Officer, Eurex

With more than 20 years of industry experience, Thomas Book is one of the pioneers in the field of electronic trading. Having joined Deutsche Börse Group in 1995, he was part of the team that rolled out DTB‘s remote membership concept across Europe and the US. During this time, he was able to gain deep insights into the trading business and the importance of innovation and technology for an exchange. 

Thomas also was part of the project that founded Eurex, the first of its kind cross border exchange merger of DTB and Soffex. In 2001, he rounded off his profound industry knowledge with a Ph. D. thesis on "Electronic exchange trading and global markets". 

Prior to being appointed CEO of Eurex Exchange in 2016, Thomas shaped Deutsche Börse‘s clearing business for many years. Appointed to the Eurex Board in 2007, he was Head of Clearing until 2014. In 2013, he assumed the role as CEO of Eurex Clearing AG which he held until 2016. As of 1 July 2018, Thomas was appointed as Member of the Executive Board, Deutsche Börse AG, responsible for Trading & Clearing.

Thomas is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of European Energy Exchange AG as well as Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board of 360 Treasury Systems AG and of China Europe International Exchange AG.

Harold de Boer, Managing Director & Head of R&D, Transtrend

Harold is the architect of Transtrend's Diversified Trend Program, responsible for research & development, portfolio management and trading. Harold was born and raised on a dairy farm in Drenthe. And from a young age, he has been intrigued by linking mathematics to the real world around us. In the final phase of his studies, while working on the project that would later become Transtrend, he became fascinated by the concept of leptokurtosis – or ‘fat tails’ – in probability distributions, a topic which has inspired him throughout his career.

His approach to markets is best described as a combination of a farmer’s common sense and mathematics, never losing sight of the underlying fundamentals.

Jan Bart de Boer, Chief Commercial Officer, ABN AMRO Clearing Bank

Since 2004 Jan Bart de Boer is a Board Member of ABN AMRO Clearing Bank NV. He serves as the Chairman of the EuroCCP NV Supervisory Board and is a Board Member of the FIA.  

Jan Bart started his career at ING Bank where he worked in various markets related positions from 1994 onwards. He holds a Law degree from Leiden Universit.

William Bryant, Partner & Portfolio Analyst, Albourne Partners

William Bryant is a Partner in Albourne’s portfolio advisory team based in London. Will joined Albourne in 2005 and has been based in London, San Francisco and Connecticut working with clients to build and maintain their alternative portfolios. Will’s role is to support Albourne’s wide range of clients with their alternative allocations. Among other things, this has brought Will into the world of responsible investing, helping to build an understanding of the activity within the alternative investment industry for those increasing number of investors focused on responsible investing. Will is a CFA charterholder and a member of the PRI hedge fund advisory committee.

Adeline Diab, Head of ESG & Thematic Investing, Bloomberg Intelligence  

Adeline is Head of ESG and Thematic Investing EMEA for Bloomberg Intelligence. She has over 17 years of experience managing, overseeing and directing investment strategies across asset classes with a focus on sustainability and disruptive trends, translating them into unique business propositions. Prior to Bloomberg, Adeline has been a portfolio manager of Environmental and Thematic funds before embedding ESG across asset classes for over $400bn AUM and overseeing stewardship on over $60bn AUM. She led such efforts for leading financial institutions including the World Bank, HSBC, GLG Partners, APG and Aviva Investors - across continents. Adeline has also been involved in the public policy debate and regularly shares her ideas in the media.

Bill Diviney, Senior Economist, ABN AMRO Bank N.V. 

Bill Diviney is a Senior Economist covering the US and UK. Prior to joining ABN AMRO, he worked as an economist and FX strategist at Barclays, based in the Tokyo and Singapore offices, where he covered G10 FX markets and Emerging Asia. Bill studied economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (BA) and at the University of St Andrews (MSc).

Stuart Heath, Director, Equity & Index Product Design at Eurex

Stuart Heath is based in the UK Representative Office of Deutsche Börse AG where he covers Eurex Groups derivatives business focusing on development of Eurex equity and index derivative products. Stuart’s area of responsibility is specifically the introduction of new derivatives product to migrate OTC derivatives into the cleared and exchange traded environment. Stuart joined Eurex in 2007 and has been involved in key product introductions at Eurex including designing, introducing and managing listed index dividend futures and options products as well as more recently total return futures. Prior to joining Eurex Stuart held positions in credit and fixed income trading, covering both credit default swaps and corporate bonds at investment banks in London. Stuart holds an BA(Hons) in Accountancy and Finance and an MSc in International Banking and Financial Studies from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

Tobias Hekster, Co-CIO, True Partner

Tobias has been actively trading for the past 22 years in various different roles in several markets across the globe. Starting at IMC in 1998 as a pit trader in Amsterdam, Tobias has established the off-floor arbitrage desk, headed the Chicago office in the transition from floor trading to electronic trading and set up the Asian volatility arbitrage desk in Hong Kong. Tobias holds an MSc in Economics from University of Groningen, Netherlands. Next to his role as Co-CIO, he taught as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and as an Adjunct Professor of Financial Practice at National Taiwan University.

Thibaut Herens, Partner, Optiver

Thibaut is a partner at leading proprietary market making firm, Optiver, and heads up its European Single Stock Derivatives and Equity Delta One divisions. He has extensive experience managing risk during intense volatility, such as single stock market making through the sovereign debt crisis of 2011; setting-up market making in Brazil indices and trading through the elections in 2014; as well as heading the SX5E index flow desk through Brexit and US elections in 2016.

In the last couple of years his focus has been on developing the Delta One desk, in particular EU Indices and single stock forward trading and dividends. Thibaut holds a Master’s degree in Engineering from Imperial College in London. He started his trading career in 2010 when he joined Optiver in Amsterdam.

Alexander Jacobs, Global Head of OTC Clearing, ABN AMRO Clearing Bank

As Global Head of OTC Clearing, Alexander Jacobs is responsible for all OTC trading and clearing related business within ABN AMRO Clearing. As of 2014 Alexander heads the OTC Derivatives Clearing Services, which services and facilitates Financial Institutions, Hedge Funds and Professional Trading Firms in their OTC trading and clearing activities Alexander fulfilled various senior roles in derivative trading and investment management covering multiple asset classes, client segments and financial products of which the last 15 years with ABN AMRO, Fortis and ING IM.  Prior to joining Investment banking, Alexander spent 6 years as Market Maker trading equity derivatives on the Amsterdam Options Exchange.

Will Mitting, Founder, Acuiti

Will is the founder and managing director of Acuiti.io, the management intelligence platform for the derivatives market. Acuiti helps senior executives across the global derivatives market make decisions by providing proprietary insights and indepth analysis of market trends. 
Will founded Acuiti in February 2019 after 8 years at Euromoney Institutional Investor where he served as Editor and Publisher of FOW and oversaw the merger between FOW and Global Investor becoming managing director of the combined group in October 2016. Prior to joining FOW, he spent 18 months in Malawi where he founded the first magazine publishing company in the Northern Region of the African country to test a thesis that business provided a better route to long term development than aid. 

Zubin Ramdarshan, Head of Equity and Index Product Design, Eurex

Zubin has over twenty years’ experience of vanilla and light-exotic derivatives, both OTC and listed exchange products. He joined Eurex from financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald where he was a managing director for the European ETF business. Previously, he spent five years at Jefferies as a managing director and Head of Equity Derivative Trading in London, and prior to that, he held senior level roles at Macquarie Bank and Bear Stearns. Zubin began his career at Deutsche Bank in 1998.

Zubin Ramdarshan received a BSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from The London School of Economics.

Randolf Roth, Member of the Executive Board, Eurex

In April 2016, Randolf Roth was appointed to the Managing Board of Eurex Frankfurt AG where he is responsible for Eurex Market Design. He is also a member of the Management Board of Eurex Deutschland since July 2016.

Until February 2016 Randolf Roth served as CEO two related companies: Zimory GmbH and Deutsche Börse Cloud Exchange AG. Previously, between 1999 - 2014, he had already been working for Eurex in London, Chicago and Frankfurt in a number of roles including Head of Strategy and Head of Market Structure.

Until June 2016 Randolf Roth was member of the Supervisory Board of EEX AG. In 1999, Randolf Roth received his PhD in Financial Engineering from Technische Universität Dresden.

Julia Schieffer, Founder, DerivSource

Julia Schieffer is the founder & editor of DerivSource.com, a digital publication and online community for derivatives and post-trade professionals globally. A seasoned journalist, Julia specialises in pre and post-trade operations, technology (fintech, regtech), risk management and regulatory compliance. Prior to starting up DerivSource, Julia wrote for multiple trade publications both in the US and UK and was managing editor for Operations Management, a publication of Institutional Investor News/Euromoney PLC. 

Andreas Schmidt, Equity Derivatives Application Specialist, Bloomberg

Andreas Schmidt has been with Bloomberg since 2013 and is part of their specialist team focusing on equity derivatives.
His role is to support clients with technical details around Bloomberg’s equity derivatives product offering, be this on and off terminal functionality, or specific data.

Andreas works alongside product managers in order to help prioritizing product updates or new builds depending on client demand as well as Bloomberg’s client relationship teams.

Prior to having joined Bloomberg as an equity derivatives specialist, he spent over 20 years in the equity derivatives markets and has been a flow trader most of his career, but moved into sales covering institutional clients in the German speaking region.

Philip Simons, Global Head of Sales, Fixed Income Derivatives Funding & Financing, Eurex  

Philip Simons has 30 years experience in the financial industry where he started life as a swaps trader before moving in to the clearing world, initially heading up the clearing business at UBS followed by Cargill. Philip later moved into the custody and collateral management space at J.P.Morgan before joining Deutsche Börse Group.

Philip initially joined as head of the Clearing Sales and Relationship Management Section and is now Global Head of Fixed Income Derivatives Funding & Financing Sales covering both the Trading & Clearing of listed and OTC derivatives, repo and securities lending products. Philip is responsible for building strong relationships with clients, attracting new trading and clearing members as well as the development and promotion of new products and services.

Max Verheijen, Director Financial Markets, Cardano

Max Verheijen has held several positions at successful risk management company Cardano, most recently as Director advising clients and institutions on the implementation of risk management solutions. From 2010 to 2020 as Managing Director and member of the management team, Max was responsible for managing and coaching of staff, introduction of new products and implementation of new rules and regulations. Before joining Cardano, Max was Vice President at the Interest Rate Derivatives Department of ING Bank. 

Max has a M.Sc. in Economics from Tilburg University, and he has also completed a postgraduate program on Treasury Management and Corporate Finance.