Future of Finance Conference

The Future of Finance conference is a forum for discussing how to use finance to address major social challenges.  Lectures and panel discussions will be presented by thought leaders in industry and academia, reflecting Yale’s distinctive culture of intellectual engagement.  The audience will be Yale alumni, members of the extended Yale community and guests, particularly those involved in areas of finance, law and policy.  There is also a limited number of seats available to the public.

The intent is to frame finance as a vital tool for addressing major social challenges.  We hope to build on it to create a forum for these issues at Yale and to expose the Yale community to thought leadership and innovation in financial research, practice, regulation and governance.  Space is limited; register online now.

Conference Agenda [PDF]

Register Now

Speakers

• Robert Shiller

  Sterling Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, and Professor of Finance and Fellow at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management.
  

  Robert J. Shiller is Sterling Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, and Professor of Finance and Fellow at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1967 and his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972. He has written on financial markets, financial innovation, behavioral economics, macroeconomics, real estate, statistical methods, and on public attitudes, opinions, and moral judgments regarding markets. His 1989 book Market Volatility (MIT Press) is a mathematical and behavioral analysis of price fluctuations in speculative markets. His 1993 book Macro Markets: Creating Institutions for Managing Society's Largest Economic Risks (Oxford University Press) (available via subscribing libraries on Oxford Online) proposes a variety of new risk-management contracts, such as futures contracts in national incomes or securities based on real estate that would permit the management of risks to standards of living. His book Irrational Exuberance (Princeton 2000, Broadway Books, 2001; 2nd edition Princeton, 2005; 3rd edition Princeton 2015) is an analysis and explication of speculative bubbles, with special reference to the stock market and real estate. His book The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century (Princeton University Press, 2003) is an analysis of an expanding role of finance, insurance, and public finance in our future. His book Subprime Solution: How the Global Financial Crisis Happened and What to Do about It, published in September 2008 by Princeton University Press, offers an analysis of the housing and economic crisis and a plan of action against it. He co-authored, with George A. Akerlof, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism published in March 2009 by Princeton University Press. His book, Finance and the Good Society, was published in April 2012 by Princeton University Press. His repeat-sales home price indices, developed originally with Karl E. Case, are now produced by CoreLogic and published as the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange now maintains futures markets based on the S&P/Case-Shiller Indices. He has been research associate, National Bureau of Economic Research since 1980, and has been co-organizer of NBER workshops: on behavioral finance with Richard Thaler since 1991, and on macroeconomics and individual decision making (behavioral macroeconomics) with George Akerlof 1994-2007. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen in 2013. He served as Vice President of the American Economic Association, 2005 and President of the Eastern Economic Association, 2006-07. He was elected President of the American Economic Association for 2016. He writes a regular column "Finance in the 21st Century" for Project Syndicate, which publishes around the world, and "Economic View" for The New York Times.

• Wilbur Ross

  Chairman, WL Ross & Co
  

  Wilbur L. Ross is Chairman of WL Ross & Co which he founded in 2000 to buy private equity funds which he had begun at Rothschild Inc. He previously had been Executive Managing Director of Rothschild for 24 years. Invesco acquired WL Ross & Co LLC in 2006. Mr. Ross has assisted in more than $400 billion of corporate restructurings and is the only person elected to both the Private Equity Hall of Fame and the Turnaround Management Hall of Fame. Among his most notable turnaround investments are International Steel Group, International Coal Group, Bank United, Bank of Ireland, American Home Mortgage Corp, Assured Guaranty and Navigator Holdings. He is Chairman of WL Ross Holding Corp, a $500 million equity Special Purpose Acquisition Corp. listed on NASDAQ and has been nominated as Vice Chairman of Bank of Cyprus. He is a board member of ArcelorMittal, EXCO Resources, Sun Bancorp and other corporations. He also is a trustee of the Brookings Institution and the Chairman of its Economic Studies Council. He had earlier been privatization advisor to New York City Mayor Giuliani and was appointed by President Clinton to the board of the U.S.–Russia Investment Fund. Mr. Ross serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council of Harvard Business School and on the board of the Yale University School of Management and its new International Center in Beijing. President Kim Dae-jung awarded him a medal for helping South Korea during its financial crisis and in November 2014, the Emperor of Japan awarded him The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star. Mr. Ross holds a CFA and is a graduate of Yale University and of Harvard Business School (with distinction). He currently is listed as number 190 on the Forbes 400 list.

• David Bach

  Senior Associate Dean for Executive MBA and Global Programs & Senior Lecturer
  

  David Bach is senior lecturer in global business and politics. His research and teaching focuses on business-government relations, nonmarket strategy, and market regulation in a globalizing world economy, with particular emphasis on the regulation of financial markets. Bach has published widely in leading academic journals and in practitioner publications including the Sloan Management Review, the Financial Times, HBR blog, BizEd, Forbes India, Business Strategy Review, and the Conference Board Review. His work on the nexus of business and politics has twice earned him a spot as "one to watch" for the Thinkers 50 ranking of leading global business thinkers. In 2011, he was named one of the top 40 business school professors under 40 and was selected as one of the top 50 business school professors to follow on Twitter. He has won numerous awards for his teaching and for his case studies on companies including BP, Endesa, Starbucks, and Playboy. As senior associate dean for executive MBA and global programs, Bach leads Yale SOM's executive MBA programs, the new Master of Advanced Management degree program, and global opportunities, including spearheading Yale SOM's involvement with the Global Network for Advanced Management. Prior to joining Yale SOM, Bach was professor of strategic management (with tenure) and dean of programs at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain. As dean of programs he was responsible for the school’s portfolio of approximately 20 master’s degree programs and an internal staff of 70 team members, driving program innovation, and ensuring academic rigor and operational excellence. He also served as the academic director of the IE Brown Executive MBA. He oversaw the school’s Learning Innovation division, which develops IE’s acclaimed suite of online learning tools and produces pioneering multimedia materials. A native of Germany, Bach received his PhD and MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a BA from Yale University.

• Nicholas Barberis

  Stephen and Camille Schramm Professor of Finance
  

  Professor Barberis’ research focuses on behavioral finance — in particular, on applications of cognitive psychology to understanding investor trading behavior and the pricing of financial assets. He has published extensively in the top economics and finance journals, gives frequent presentations about his work to both academic and non-academic audiences, and has won numerous awards for both research and teaching. Prior to coming to Yale, Professor Barberis taught at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

• Teresa Barger

  Co-Founder & Senior Managing Director, Cartica Management, LLC
  

• Zhiwu Chen

  Professor of Finance
  

  Professor Zhiwu Chen is an expert on finance theory, securities valuation, emerging markets, and China's economy and capital markets. Dr. Chen started his career by publishing research papers in top economics and finance journals on topics related to financial markets and theories of asset pricing. Around 2001, Dr. Chen began to expand his research focus by going beyond mature markets and investigating market development and institution-building issues in the context of China’s transition process and other emerging markets. What institutions are necessary for markets to develop? Why is finance important for society? How does financial development affect social structure and individual freedom? His work has been featured in newspapers and magazines in the United States, Hong Kong, China and other countries. He is a frequent contributor to media publications in China on topics of economic policy, market development and legal reform. His list of books published in China includes: How Is Wealth Created? (2005), Media, Law and Markets (2005), Why Are the Chinese Industrious and Yet Not Rich? (2008), Irrational Overconfidence? (2008), The Logic of Finance (2009), 24 Wealth Lectures (2009), and Assessing China’s Economic Growth of the Past 30 Years (2010).

• Ashvin B. Chhabra

  Author of The Aspirational Investor: Taming the Markets to Achieve Your Life’s Goals.
  

  Ashvin B. Chhabra is the author of The Aspirational Investor: Taming the Markets to Achieve Your Life’s Goals. He is widely recognized as one of the founders of goals based wealth management and for his seminal work “Beyond Markowitz” which integrates Modern Portfolio Theory with Behavioral Finance. Dr. Chhabra was Chief Investment Officer and head of investment management and guidance at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management from 2013-2015. He was the Chief Investment Officer at the Institute for Advanced Study from 2007-2013 and Managing Director and head of wealth management strategies and analytics for Merrill Lynch’s Global Private Client Group from 2001-2007. Prior to that, he was head of quantitative research at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Dr. Chhabra is the chair of the Board of Regents for the Financial Analysts Seminar of CFA Institute. He is also member of the international advisory board of EDHEC-Risk Institute, the Board of Trustees of the Stony Brook Foundation, and the investment committee of the Institute for Advanced Study. Dr. Chhabra has lectured at Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia Business School, Baruch College CUNY, and the University of Chicago. He holds a PhD in applied physics from Yale University.

• James Choi

  Professor of Finance
  

  Professor Choi's research spans behavioral finance, behavioral economics, household finance, capital markets, health economics, and sociology. His work on default options has led to changes in 401(k) plan design at many U.S. corporations and has influenced pension legislation in the United States and abroad. In other papers, he has investigated topics such as the influence of racial, gender, and religious identity on economic preferences, investor ignorance of mutual fund fees, the effect of deadlines and peer information on savings choices, how retail investor sentiment in China affects stock returns, and the use of subtle planning prompts to increase vaccination rates. Professor Choi is a recipient of the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for outstanding scholarly writing on lifelong financial security. He is a member of the FINRA Investor Issues Committee and a TIAA-CREF Institute Fellow.

• Eli Combs

  President, MeehanCombs
  

  Eli Combs is one of the founding partners of MeehanCombs and serves as the President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Compliance Officer. He is one of two members of the firm’s Investment Committee and the internal member of MeehanCombs’ Board of Advisors. He has over 15 years of experience at investment managers. Prior to founding Meehan Combs in 2012, Mr. Combs was a founding member of Alden Global Capital and a Managing Director of Alden Global Capital from 2008 to 2012. Previous to that, he was a Managing Director at Eos Partners. Earlier in his career, Mr. Combs was a Director at Dickstein Partners, a Director at Caxton Health Holdings and an Associate at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He began his career in the investment world as an investment advisor at Merrill Lynch in New York. Mr. Combs received a B.A. from Miami University in 1994, an M.S. in Finance from The City University of New York in 1998, and an M.B.A. from Yale University in 2001.

• Donna J. Dean

  Chief Investment Officer, Rockefeller Foundation
  

  Donna Dean is Chief Investment Officer of the Rockefeller Foundation, where she is responsible for management of the Foundation’s $4.2 billion endowment. Donna came to RF after seven years at Yale University, where she served as Director of Investments, with responsibility for real estate as well as oversight of the New Haven Initiative community investment program. As part of the New Haven Initiative, she oversaw redevelopment of the Broadway retail area adjacent to the campus. Donna worked for CIGNA Investments in Hartford from 1984 to 1987, where she managed real estate portfolios in the southeastern United States. From 1978 to 1984 she was with International Paper Company in New York and served as Manager of Trust Investments, with responsibility for the company’s $1 billion pension and employee benefit funds. Donna began her career in the national lending division at the Charlotte headquarters of what is now Bank of America. Donna has a B.A. in English Literature from Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina and an M.B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was awarded a Morehead Fellowship. Ms. Dean is a Trustee of Harbor Funds, a mutual fund company with $85 billion under management.

• Charles Ellis

  Consultant in Investing & Founder, Greenwich Associates
  

  Charles D. Ellis serves as a consultant on investing to large institutional investors, government organizations, and wealthy families, as a director of the Vanguard Group of mutual funds and several business ventures, and as Managing Partner of a pro bono partnership of Harvard Business School classmates and friends, The Partners of ’63, which commits time and treasure in support of entrepreneurial, change-oriented ventures in education, particularly those focused on children born into tough circumstances. Charley’s professional career centered on three decades with Greenwich Associates, the international strategy consulting firm he founded in 1972. Recognized worldwide for the proprietary research which informs its consulting, the firm grew in the 30 years he was Managing Partner to serve the leading firms in over 130 professional financial markets around the world. Services to the investment profession include: Chair and two terms as governor of the profession’s CFA Institute and an associate editor of both The Journal of Portfolio Management and the Financial Analysts Journal. He is one of 11 individuals honored for lifetime contributions to the investment profession. Academic activities include two appointments (in 1970 and 1974) to the faculty of the Harvard Business School and one (in 1986) to the Yale School of Management, both to teach the advanced course on investment management, and 20 years on the faculty of the Investment Workshop at Princeton. Charley chairs the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, where he also chairs the investment committee, and is a Trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where he chairs the finance committee. He has previously served as a successor trustee of Yale University, where he chaired the investment committee, as trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy and Eagle Hill School, and as an Overseer of the Stern Schools of Business at New York University. He has also served on the Visiting Committee and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Associates of the Harvard Business School. The author of 16 books, including What It Takes (John Wiley), The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs (Penguin), Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox, CAPITAL, and Winning the Loser’s Game (McGraw-Hill), and with Burt Malkiel, Elements of Investing (all John Wiley & Sons), Charley has written over 100 articles for business and professional journals. His article “The Loser’s Game” won the investment profession’s Graham & Dodd award in 1977. Joe Wilson was selected as one of the best business books of 2006. A graduate of Exeter and Yale College, Charley earned an MBA (with distinction) at Harvard Business School and a Ph.D. at New York University. He is married to his best friend, Linda Koch Lorimer, Vice President and Secretary of Yale University. Their four children are Harold, Chad, Kelly and Peter.

• Andrea Frazzini

  Principal, AQR Capital
  

  Andrea is a Principal on AQR’s Global Stock Selection team, focusing on research and portfolio management of the Firm’s Long/Short and Long-Only equity strategies. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He has published in top academic journals and won several awards for his research, including the Smith Breeden Award, the Fama-DFA award, the BGI best paper award, the Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award, and the PanAgora Crowell Memorial Prize. Prior to AQR, Andrea was an associate professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also served as a consultant for DKR Capital Partners and JP Morgan Securities and on the board of directors of the Center for Research in Security Prices at the University of Chicago. He earned a B.S. in economics from the University of Roma Tre, an M.S. in economics from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.

• Dean Karlan

  Professor of Economics
  

  Dean Karlan is a Professor of Economics at Yale University. Karlan is President of Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit organization dedicated to discovering and promoting effective solutions to global poverty problems. Karlan is on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab. As a social entrepreneur, he is co-Founder of stickK.com, a website that uses lessons from behavioral economics to help people reach personal goals, such as weight loss and smoking cessation, through commitment contracts. In 2011, Karlan co-authored More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty. Karlan received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. His research focuses on microeconomic issues of financial decision-making, specifically employing experimental methodologies to examine what works, what does not, and why in interventions in microfinance, health, behavioral economics and charitable giving. In microfinance, he has studied credit impact, interest rate policy, savings product design, credit scoring policies, entrepreneurship training, and group versus individual liability. Karlan received a Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T., an M.B.A. and an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Virginia. He can be followed on twitter @deankarlan, and blogs regularly on Freakonomics.

• Lingfeng Li

  Portfolio Manager, Capula Investment Management
  

  Dr. Lingfeng Li is a hedge fund portfolio manager specializing in relative value trading strategy of global fixed income and foreign exchange. He has been a core member of the investment team at Capula Investment Management since 2008. At Capula, he co-managed JPY and USD fixed income portfolios, as well as the macro trading portfolio of Capula Tail Risk fund, which helps investors hedge extreme systemic risks. Capula Investment is a London based global asset manager with US$ 10 billion under management and regional offices in the U.S., Japan, and Hong Kong. Capula focuses on trading of government bonds and interest rate derivatives in the US, Europe, and Japan. Dr. Li is currently based in Hong Kong and focuses on global macro and emerging markets. Prior to Capula, Dr. Li worked at OAKHILL PLATINUM PARTNERS (OHPP), a New York based hedge fund, from 2003 to 2007, where he managed OHPP Asian portfolios. He produced consistent and outstanding excess returns, helping grow OHPP asset under management to 5bn USD, making it one of the largest fixed income hedge funds. Between OHPP and Capula, he served as a director for global proprietary trading at Deutsche bank, responsible for its investment in East Asian markets. Dr. Lingfeng Li holds Ph.D. in economics from Yale University. His academic research was presented at annual conferences of American Finance Association, published in leading academic Journals, and was cited by Wall Street

• Andrew Lo

  Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor and the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management
  

  Andrew W. Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor, a Professor of Finance, and the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to MIT Sloan, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School as the W.P. Carey Assistant Professor of Finance from 1984 to 1987, and as the W.P. Carey Associate Professor of Finance from 1987 to 1988. His research interests include the empirical validation and implementation of financial asset pricing models; the pricing of options and other derivative securities; financial engineering and risk management; trading technology and market microstructure; statistics, econometrics, and stochastic processes; computer algorithms and numerical methods; financial visualization; nonlinear models of stock and bond returns; hedge-fund risk and return dynamics and risk transparency; and, most recently, evolutionary and neurobiological models of individual risk preferences and financial markets. Lo has published numerous articles in finance and economics journals. He is a co-author of The Econometrics of Financial Markets, A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street, The Heretics of Finance, and The Evolution of Technical Analysis, and is the author of Hedge Funds: An Analytic Perspective. Lo is currently an associate editor of the Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Portfolio Management, the Journal of Computational Finance, and Quantitative Finance, and is a co-editor of Annual Review of Financial Economics. His awards include the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Paul A. Samuelson Award, the American Association for Individual Investors Award, the Graham and Dodd Award, the 2001 IAFE-SunGard Financial Engineer of the Year Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the CFA Institute’s James R. Vertin Award, and awards for teaching excellence from both the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and MIT Sloan. A former governor of the Boston Stock Exchange, he is currently a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the OFR Financial Research Advisory Committee, the New York Federal Reserve Board’s Financial Advisory Roundtable, FINRA’s Economic Advisory Committee, the Consortium for Systemic Risk Analytics Academic Advisory Board, the Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their Applications, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Board of Overseers. He is founder and chief scientific officer of AlphaSimplex Group, LLC, a quantitative investment management company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lo holds a BA in economics from Yale University as well as an AM and a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

• Jane Mendillo

  Former CIO Harvard Management Company
  

  Jane Mendillo has spent over 30 years in the field of endowment and investment management. From 2008 to 2014, as the CEO of the Harvard Management Company, she managed Harvard University’s approximately $40 billion global endowment and related assets across public and private markets. From 2002-2008 Ms. Mendillo was the Chief Investment Officer at Wellesley College. Prior to that she spent 15 years at the Harvard Management Company in various investment roles, from public and private equity to alternative assets. Before joining HMC for the first time Ms Mendillo was a management consultant at Bain & Co. and also worked at the Yale Investment Office. Ms.Mendillo serves as a member of the boards of the Berklee College of Music and the Mellon Foundation, and is also on the Board and Investment Committee of The Boston Foundation, and the Chair of the Investment Committees of Partners Healthcare. She is a graduate of Yale College and the Yale Schoool of Management, and a former member of the Investment Committee at Yale. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations the Boston Security Analysts Society.

• Ranji Nagaswami

  Senior Advisor, Corsair Capital
  

  Ms. Nagaswami is a Senior Advisor to Corsair Capital, one of the longest-standing private equity firms focused on investing in the global financial services industry. As an independent advisor, she provides strategic advice and helps evaluate potential acquisition candidates in the asset management industry. Previously, Ms. Nagaswami worked at Bridgewater Associates, the $130 Billion+ hedge fund and risk-parity strategy pioneer. From 2010 thru 2012 Ms. Nagaswami served as Chief Investment Advisor to the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for the City of New York’s $150 Billion+ public employee pension plans. She developed a path breaking restructuring proposal for the plans’ strategic investment policy allocation and worked on key governance initiatives to improve decision-making by the System’s Boards. Prior to joining the public sector, Ms. Nagaswami held executive and portfolio management positions at two world-class asset management firms. Ms. Nagaswami was previously Chief Investment Officer within the Blend Strategies team of AllianceBernstein L.P.; with responsibility for the firm’s $20 Billion strategic multi-asset portfolios and $85 Billion Blend equities strategies. She served from 2004 to 2008 as Chief Investment Officer and a member of the Executive Board of AllianceBernstein Investments, the retail division of the firm where she was widely credited with leading the turnaround of the $180 Billion global mutual fund business. From 2001 until 2004, Ms. Nagaswami was a senior portfolio manager of the Bernstein U.S. Value Equities team and a member of the US Value Equities Investment Policy Group. Ms. Nagaswami joined Sanford C. Bernstein in 1999. From 1986 to 1999, she was at UBS Asset Management and its predecessor organizations where her last role was Managing Director and Co-Head of U.S. Fixed Income. Ms. Nagaswami is a Member of the $60 Billion UAW VEBA Medical Benefits Trust Investment Advisory Council, and the CFA Institute’s Ethics and Standards Advisory Council. Ms. Nagaswami is a Henry Crown Fellow and seminar moderator for the Aspen Institute and is launching the Finance Leaders Fellows program within the Institute’s Global Leadership Network. She has been a Visiting Executive Fellow at the Yale School of Management’s International Center of Finance, working with MBA students and finance faculty on a research survey of the pension and investment industry. She was previously a member of the Yale University Investments Committee, the Yale School of Management Advisory Board, Trustee of Greenwich Academy and on the North American Council of Ashoka, a global fellowship of social entrepreneurs. Ms. Nagaswami earned a Bachelor of Commerce from Bombay University in India, a MBA from the Yale School of Management and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

• Roberta Romano

  Sterling Professor of Law and Director Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law
  

  Roberta Romano is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Director of the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law. Her research has focused on state competition for corporate charters, the political economy of takeover regulation, shareholder litigation, institutional investor activism in corporate governance and the regulation of securities markets and financial instruments and institutions. Professor Romano is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the European Corporate Governance Institute, a research associate of the National Bureau for Economic Research, a past President of the American Law and Economics Association and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, and a past co-editor of the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization. She has received the Yale Law Women teaching award three times and is the author of The Genius of American Corporate Law (1993) and The Advantage of Competitive Federalism for Securities Regulation (2002), and series editor of the Foundations of Law reader series and editor of the volume in the series, Foundations of Corporate Law, 2d ed. (2010).

• Eddie Sun-Keung Tam

  CEO & CIO, Central Asset Investments & Management
  

  Eddie Tam is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Central Asset Investments. Mr. Tam founded Central Asset Investments in April 2005, and oversees the management of the firm, as well as the CAI Global Fund and the CAI Special Opportunities Fund. Primarily, Mr. Tam is responsible for top down asset allocation between strategies, asset classes, geography and themes. Under his leadership, the CAI Global Fund has an annualized return of over 18% since its inception in September 2005. The fund was ranked the #1 best-performing multi-strategy hedge fund globally according to Bloomberg (based on 5 year annual returns) and Barclayhedge in 2013. Mr. Tam has over 20 years of experience within the industry. Prior to founding Central Asset Investments, Mr. Tam was at Fore Research & Management as the Chief Portfolio Manager of the Fore Opportunity Fund. Before joining the buy-side, Mr. Tam worked with equity derivatives, first at Merrill Lynch, and then at Credit Lyonnais where he was most recently the Head of Sales and Marketing of Asian derivatives. During this time, Mr. Tam was credited as one of the pioneers in Asian equity derivatives. Mr. Tam received his MPPM from Yale School of Management in 1993, holds an M.A.Sc., a B.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto, and is currently an active board member of the International Center of Finance and the Greater China Advisory Board at the Yale School of Management. In October 2010, Mr. Tam was named one of the 25 most influential people in Asian hedge funds by Asian Investors. Mr. Tam is a frequent guest on leading financial and business television channels, including CNBC and Bloomberg TV, where he shares his latest macroeconomic views and investment strategies with viewers. Central Asset Investments Central Asset Investments is an established Asia-focused multi-strategy investment firm. Founded in 2005, Central Asset Investments capitalizes on the firm’s Asian investment background and strength in equities, convertible bonds, and fixed income in order to provide investors with long term, superior absolute returns. The Central Asset Investments team consists of professionals in both Hong Kong and Shenzhen, working across portfolio management, research, risk management, investor relations and operations. Central Asset Investments was voted as the “Asia Focused Multi-Strategy Investment Firm of the Year” by Acquisition International in 2014. Central Asset Investments manages the CAI Global Fund and the CAI Special Opportunities Fund. The CAI Global Fund has an annualized return of over 19% since its inception in September 2005. The fund is ranked the #1 best-performing multi-strategy hedge fund globally according to Bloomberg (based on 5 year annual returns) and Barclayhedge in 2013. The fund was also voted “Best Multi-strategy Hedge Fund” in 2011, “Best Hedge Fund Asia-Pacific” in 2010 and “Best Hedge Fund Asia (Ex-Japan)” in 2008 by Asian Investor

• David Teton

  Partner, ff Venture Capital
  

  David Teten (teten.com) is a Partner with ff Venture Capital (ffvc.com). ffVC has made 245 investments in 76 companies since 2008. David has advised clients such as Goldman Sachs Special Situations Group, Icahn Enterprises, LLR Partners ($1.4b fund), Birch Hill Equity Partners (C$2B fund), and other institutional investors. He is also Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York, the largest angel network on the East Coast. David led or co-led the first studies on disruption in the investing industry, private equity and venture capital deal origination, and how VCs create portfolio company value. He is a published author and frequent keynote speaker.

• Paolo Zannoni

  Partner/Managing Director, Co-CEO, Moscow Office, Chair, Italian Investment Banking Business, Goldman Sachs
  

  Paolo Zannoni joined FIAT in1979 as chief of staff of Gianni Agnelli, Chairman of the Board. While at Fiat he was president of the USA and USSR corporate entities in .In 1994 Paolo joined Goldman Sachs international in London. He became a partner in 2000.Currently he is chairman of the Italian Investment Banking Division and CEO of Goldman Sachs Russia. Paolo also serves as Chairman of Dolce e Gabbana Holding. He received a BA from the University of Bologna and a MPhil in Political Science from Yale.

• William Goetzmann

  Yale School of Management
  Host
  

  Professor Goetzmann is an expert on a diverse range of investments, including stocks, mutual funds, real estate, and paintings. His research topics include forecasting stock markets, selecting mutual fund managers, housing as investment, and the risk and return of art. Professor Goetzmann's work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Business Week, The Economist, Forbes, and Art and Auction. Professor Goetzmann has a background in arts and media management. As a documentary filmmaker, he has written and co-produced programs for Nova and the American Masters series, including a profile of artist Thomas Eakins. A former director of Denver's Museum of Western Art, Professor Goetzmann co-authored the award winning book, The West of the Imagination.

• Geert Rouwenhorst

  Yale School of Management
  Host
  

  Professor Rouwenhorst specializes in international finance and asset pricing. His research interests include business cycle theory, the empirical tradeoff between risk and return in developed and emerging stock markets, and portfolio choice. His recent work examines hedge fund strategies, mutual fund settlement, commodity investments, and the history of financial innovation.

Additional Information

• Hotel Information

  Hotel Reservations
  Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale
  155 Temple Street
  New Haven, Connecticut 06510
  (203) 772-6664

• Conference Events

  September 9, 2015

  Sessions will occur in Zhang Auditorium

  9:00 a.m.	Registration and breakfast
  9:45 a.m.	Welcome and Overview
  10:00 a.m.	Keynote Speaker: Wilbur Ross, Founder WL Ross & Co LLC
  10:45 a.m.	Break
  11:30 a.m.	Finance and the Good Society Robert J. Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale University
  12:15 p.m.	Lunch, New Haven Lawn Club
  2:00 p.m.	Panel: Markets Nicholas Barberis, Moderator  Eli Combs, President, MeehanCombs   Andrea Frazzini, Principal AQR Capital Management  David Teton, Partner, ff Venture Capital
  3:00 p.m.	Break
  3:30 p.m.	Panel: World David Bach, Moderator  Teresa Barger, CEO Cartica Capital Eddie Tam, CEO & CIO, Portfolio Manager – Equities, Central Asset Investments Paolo Zannoni, Partner/Managing Director, Co-CEO, Moscow Office, Chair, Italian Investment Banking Business, Goldman Sachs
  4:30 p.m.	Finance and Society: Values and Tensions Ranji Nagaswami, Senior Advisor, Corsair Capital
  6:00 p.m.	Reception, New Haven Lawn Club
  7:00 p.m.	Dinner, New Haven Lawn Club

  September 10, 2015

  8:30 a.m.	Breakfast
  9:00 a.m.	Can Financial Engineering Cure Cancer? Andrew Lo, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor and the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management
  9:45 a.m.	How to Get Financial Regulation Back on Track Roberta Romano, Sterling Professor of Law and Director Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law
  10:30 a.m.	Break
  11:00 a.m.	Multi-Generational Asset Management Panel Charles Ellis, Moderator Donna Dean, Rockefeller Foundation Jane Mendillo, Former CIO Harvard Management Company Ashvin Chhabra, Former CIO Merrill Lynch
  12:00 p.m.	Lunch, New Haven Lawn Club
  1:30 p.m.	Panel: Innovation James Choi, Moderator Zhiwu Chen,  (陈志武) Professor of Finance, Yale School of Management Dean Karlan, Professor of Economics, Yale University    Lingfeng Li, Portfolio Manager, Capula Investment Management
  2:30 p.m.	Break
  3:00 p.m.	Retirement Insecuity and Spirit of '76 Charles Ellis, Consultant in Investing & Founder, Greenwich Associates
  3:45 p.m.	Conference Ends

• Conference Agenda Text

  Preliminary Agenda

• Hotel Reservation Link

  http://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/new-haven-yale/meetings/asset-management-9

Future of Finance Conference