Speaking to Legends

David Mercer is the Chief Executive Officer of LMAX Group, the leading operator of institutional FX and crypto currency execution venues. Following a successful management buyout, David has built LMAX Group into a key player in both the traditional capital markets and the crypto trading industry. Headquartered in the UK, the Group operates 6 exchanges globally and trades in excess of $25billion a day. In 2021, LMAX Group sold a minority stake to J.C. Flowers & Co.

About LMAX Group

Headquartered in London, LMAX Group is a global financial technology company and the leading independent operator of multiple institutional execution venues for FX and crypto currency trading. The Group’s portfolio includes LMAX Exchange, LMAX Global and LMAX Digital. Servicing funds, banks, asset managers and retail brokerages, LMAX Group builds and runs its own high performance, ultra-low latency global exchange infrastructure. Uniquely positioned to offer both FX and crypto trading, LMAX Group is shaping the future of capital markets and is driving the industry transformation to an open, transparent marketplace with fair, precise and consistent execution, based on robust trading technology LMAX Group has a global client base spanning 100 countries and 11 offices worldwide. To find out more, visit www.LMAX.com

 Jordi is the Chief Investment Officer of Selini Capital, a digital assets investment firm, as well as an Angel investor and advisor to tech and crypto startups. He has competed at the highest levels of strategy games competitions and transitioned from professional poker into a successful career in High Frequency Trading.

Doyne Farmer is Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. He was a founder of Prediction Company, a quantitative automated trading firm that was sold to UBS in 2006. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology.

Howard Morgan is currently the Chairman of B Capital. He co-founded First Round Capital with Josh Kopelman as the first professional Seed Stage Fund, where he remains Senior Advisor. Prior to First Round, Howard helped found Idealab with Bill Gross, and served as President of Renaissance Technologies, which he co-founded with Jim Simons. Prior to his move into the business of technology, Howard served as a professor at the Wharton School and the Moore School, both at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as at Cornell University. He is also an Executive Fellow at UC Berkeley. Howard’s research on user interface technology and the optimization of computer networks was critical to bringing the ARPAnet to Philadelphia in the 1970s. 

Through this early internet participation, he helped corporate and government agencies use technology to improve the efficiency of both large and small organizations. He also has deep experience with very large databases, and served as the first Editor of the ACM Transactions on Database Systems Journal. Throughout his career, Howard has sought out great people and nurtured them so that they could realize their dreams. His mentees have included both PhD students researching a key topic, and early stage entrepreneurs building companies and taking them from seed stage through initial public offerings. 

He currently serves as a Director of Idealab, and he is on the board of several non-profits including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and Math For America. He has also served on a number of public company Boards, including Franklin Electronic Publishers and Internet Brands, Inc. He was CEO of Kentek and Franklin during various turnover or transitional periods and in 1997 he was named Delaware Valley Entrepreneur of the Year. Howard is a respected author and a frequent speaker at major industry conferences. Howard received a PhD in Operations Research from Cornell University in 1968, and a BS in Physics from City College of the City University of New York in 1965.

Tim Draper is one of the most successful venture capitalists from Silicon Valley. 35 of his portfolio companies became unicorns which include firms like: Hotmail, Skype, Baidu, Tesla, Twitter and many more.  In this episode, we discuss Tim’s path into finance, how he launched hist first VC fund, what his outlook for the adoption of AI is, and what he thinks about data privacy and venture capitals’ investing getting more quantitative. 

Ewan Kirk, President of GAM Systematic, is a known and recognised figure in quantitative finance. He started his career in finance at Goldman Sachs, spent 13 years there and retired as a partner. Subsequently he launched Cantab Capital Partners, a Cambridge based hedge fund which managed close to $5 billion in assets under management at its peak. In this episode, we discuss Ewan’s path into finance, his time at Goldman, creation of Cantab and the principles it was built on as well as life lessons he learnt along his journey.

For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.

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Andrew McCaffery is the Chief Investment Officer of Fidelity International. Coming from humble beginnings Andrew quickly rose through the ranks and over the past 3 decades has been advising, allocating and closely working with some of the most successful and largest hedge funds worldwide. In this interview, you will learn about Andrew’s lifelong dedication to learning, the mindset of challenging yourself and entrepreneurial spirit focused on innovation. 

For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.

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Mark Mobius is one of the most recognised figures in money management and in 2011 has been named as one of the “50 Most Influential People”. Mark spent over 30 years at Franklin Templeton running its Emerging Markets Investment Trust which grew 500 fold and reached over 50 billion in AUM during his tenure. In 2018, Mark founded Mobius Capital Partners which offers an innovative private equity approach to public markets. In this episode we learn about Mark’s path into finance, his never-ending passion for learning, days at Templeton, key lessons along the journey as well as what he thinks was the biggest contributor to his success and what he wants to leave as his legacy.

For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.

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Fiona Frick is the CEO of Unigestion, a Swiss based boutique asset manager with $20bn in AUM, and she has been recognised as one of the most influential women in finance on numerous occasions. In this interview, we discussed how Unigestion created a collaborative ecosystem for conducting cutting edge research, the importance and adoption of ESG, the general trend for passive vs active management and how to be an early adopter of emerging trends.

For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.

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Alex Lipton is a prominent figure in quant finance. He spent over 20 years on the sell-side, held a number of prestigious positions in academia and received the first quant of the year award by Risk.net. He is the CTO of fintech startup Silamoney that is seeking to revolutionise financial services through distributed ledge technology. In this episode, we discuss how Alex got into quant finance and raised though the ranks, how to identify and build teams, why he thinks that stable coins are a good alternative to fiat and some of the possible limitations to their adoption.

For links and more information see our episode show notes on our website.

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