We are grateful for the ongoing support from these incredible speakers
Peter Attia, MD, is the founder of Early Medical, a medical practice that applies the principles of Medicine 3.0 to patients with the goal of lengthening their lifespan and simultaneously improving their healthspan.
He is the host of The Drive, one of the most popular podcasts covering the topics of health and medicine.
He is also the author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.
Early Medical
Daniel S. Loeb is CEO of Third Point LLC, a New York-based asset management firm founded in 1995. Third Point invests in equity and credit securities in U.S. and international markets.
Daniel is a trustee of the Mount Sinai Health System, where he established the Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s disease in memory of his late father. He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of Success Academy Charter Schools, where he also served as board Chairman from 2014-2019.
He graduated from Columbia University with an A.B. in economics in 1983, endowed the Daniel S. Loeb Scholarship for undergraduate study there, and received the school’s John Jay Award for distinguished professional achievement. In October 2020, he was awarded the Alexander Hamilton Award for his philanthropic service by the Manhattan Institute. In 2022, he was honored with UJA Federation of New York’s Gustave L. Levy Award.
Third Point
Angela is the Founder, Managing Partner, and Portfolio Manager at Bayberry Capital, an investment firm based in New York, NY. Bayberry is a long / short equity firm that invests globally through a fundamental primary-research driven process. The firm employs the same research process on both the long and short sides of the portfolio, and considers its focus on the short side to be a critical component of its strategy.
Prior to founding Bayberry, Angela spent almost six years as a Managing Director and Partner at Blue Ridge Capital. Previously, she worked at Goldman Sachs in their investment banking division, and was a pre-launch member of the investment team at BDT Capital. Angela holds a BS in Economics from Duke University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Bayberry Capital Partners LP
Tom Anglin is a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, responsible for the firm’s Australian Prime Brokerage business which provides services to help hedge funds manage risk, monitor their portfolios, maintain liquidity and build their businesses. He is also part of the firm’s Prime Brokerage sales team. Tom moved to Hong Kong from New York in 2019 where he was on the Tactical Derivative Sales desk, focused on derivative sales to hedge funds and coordinating sales to quantitative/systematic clients. He joined Goldman Sachs as a Managing Director in 2015.
Previously, Tom was a Managing Director and Head of Prime Services Origination and Co-Head of Prime Services sales at UBS in New York. Prior to that, he led the hedge fund sales team in Sydney for UBS and was previously an equities and commodities trader at New York hedge fund Ospraie Management. He moved from Australia to the US in 2000 with Macquarie Bank.
Tom earned a Bachelor's of Commerce from Monash University in Melbourne in 1996 and was awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 2001.
Goldman Sachs
Rikki Bannan is an Executive Director at IFM Investors, a global fund manager with over $215bn of funds under management. As a Portfolio Manager in IFM Investors’ Small Caps fund, Rikki is responsible for investment decisions across the consumer discretionary, health care and technology sectors, as well as being actively involved in fund raising and investor engagement for the Small Cap product.
Rikki also sits on the Advisory Committee of HEAL Partners, a growth Private Equity fund focused on investments within the Health, Education and Lifestyle sectors.
Prior to joining IFM Investors in 2015, Rikki spent six years as a Senior Equities Analyst at Macquarie Bank. Over this time she held roles in the Equity Strategy team and as an Industrials Analyst.
Rikki is a Chartered Accountant and commenced her career in KPMG’s Audit & Assurance division. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance & Accounting) from The University of Sydney.
IFM Investors
Jeremy founded Terra Capital In 2010 launching the long only Terra Capital Global Natural Resources Fund. The fund has delivered strong performance resulting in Terra Capital becoming one of Australia’s longest running open ended global resources fund.
Jeremy formally worked at RAB Capital’s Special Situations Fund, a US $2.5B long/short strategy focused on mining and energy the fund and was rated the “Best Energy and Natural Resource Fund” by Hedge Fund Review and ranked No.1 in Barron’s Hedge Fund 50 Global rankings in 2007, during Jeremy’s tenure. Prior to RAB Jeremy worked at Western Australian corporate advisory firm Azure Capital.
Terra Capital
Ravi is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Azora Capital, a financial services sector hedge fund launched in 2017. Ravi and his team are passionate about financials and have dedicated their careers to researching the space. Together they employ a deep fundamental strategy that allocates capital to the most actionable names across financial subsectors (banks, fintech, payments, brokers, asset managers, real estate, etc.) to generate alpha through distinct market cycles.
Prior to forming Azora, Ravi was a Partner and Head of U.S. Financials at Samlyn Capital from 2007 to 2016. Ravi was a Financial Services Analyst at Sigma Capital from 2003 to 2006 and began his career as an Investment Banking Analyst in Goldman Sachs' Financial Institutions Group.
Ravi earned an A.B. in Economics from Dartmouth College. Currently, he serves as Co-President of the Board of Trustees of Morristown-Beard School, his alma mater.
Azora Capital
Martin Hughes founded Toscafund Asset Management LLP in 2000. Prior to founding Toscafund, he was Chairman of Tiger Management Corporation Europe (1997-2000) and Global Head of Financials. Prior to joining Tiger, Martin worked at Credit Lyonnais Laing (1987-1997) where he specialised in researching banks, achieving a number 1 analyst ranking in 1992, becoming Head of UK Research in 1995 and Deputy Chief Executive in 1996. Previously, he worked at Barclays Investment Management and Panmure Gordon as a banks sector research analyst. Martin graduated with an honours degree in Economics from Birmingham University in 1983.
Toscafund Asset Management
Misty Jenkins is a NHMRC fellow and laboratory head in the Immunology Division at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research. Misty leads the immunotherapy program within the Brain Cancer Centre and is dedicated to discovering novel immunotherapy targets for high grade gliomas in adults and children. Her research focusses on the development of novel chimeric antigen receptor T cells for brain cancer. Her group also uses cutting edge two-photon microscopy combined with mouse models of brain cancer to investigate the tumour microenvironment and uncover unique biology of brain tumours.
Misty has a PhD in Immunology from The University of Melbourne, followed by postdoctoral positions at The Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Prof Jenkins was awarded the L’Oreal for Women in Science Fellowship (2013), was Tall Poppy of the year (2015), was awarded the Top100 Women of Influence award (2016) and was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2020.
In addition to her research career, Prof Jenkins is experienced in governance and strategy as a company Director, co-chairs a Federal Health Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and is a passionate advocate for gender equity and Indigenous Health and education. She was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2023 for distinguished service to medical science in Immunology, the support of women in STEM, and to the Indigenous community.
WEHI
Sharif el Khazen is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Metronome Capital LLP, a London-based equity investment manager established in 2012. Metronome employs a fundamental, concentrated and long-term investment approach focusing primarily on European stocks.
Prior to founding Metronome, Sharif was a Partner at Parvus Asset Management (UK) LLP from 2006 to 2011. Previously, Sharif was a leveraged finance analyst at Lehman Brothers' investment banking division in London from 2004 to 2006.
Sharif has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Economics/Mathematics from the University of Southern California. Sharif has been a CFA Charterholder since 2008.
Metronome Capital LLP
Responsible for leading our investment team, Chris has served as a Director and Portfolio Manager of Ellerston since 2005 and has over 38 years investment experience.
Prior to joining Ellerston, Chris co-founded the Melbourne based Investment Management firm Portfolio Partners in 1994, where he held various positions including Director and Senior Investment Manager and was formerly the Head of Equities until January 2003. It was from that point that he gave up his role to conceive and focus on managing the highly successful Elite Opportunities Concentrated Australian Shares Fund.
Prior to Portfolio Partners, Chris worked as a Senior Portfolio Manager, Deputy Head of Equities and Head of Resources Strategy at County Natwest Australia Investment Management where he was responsible for the management of County’s largest specialist equity mandates.
Chris has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Melbourne and is a Senior Associate of the Financial Services Institute of Australia.
Chris was inducted into the Australian Fund Managers Foundation Hall of Fame in 2018 in recognition of his contribution to the industry.
Ellerston Capital
Atul Lele is a Senior Portfolio Strategist and Head of the Portfolio Strategist Group at Bridgewater Associates. A senior member of the research group, Atul works closely with our Co-CIOs, and partners with Bridgewater’s clients on their most important investment priorities, including understanding their goals, developing investment strategies, and providing insight into the research group’s thinking on global markets and economic conditions.
Atul is a 20+ year investment industry veteran. His prior roles include serving as the CIO of Deltec International Group, the Head of Strategy, Economics and Quantitative Research for Credit Suisse Australia, and as a Portfolio Manager and Partner at White Funds Management. Atul is on the Investment Advisory Group of the Australian Consul General in New York and has regularly appeared in the financial media. He is a CFA charterholder and holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and Finance from the University of New South Wales.
Bridgewater
Jun Bei Liu is the Portfolio Manager of Tribeca’s Alpha Plus Fund. Since taking over sole responsibility for managing the Fund, she has quadrupled AUM. She is a passionate, motivated, and dedicated investment manager having built an 18-year career at Tribeca, starting as an equity analyst in 2005 and spending several years as a Portfolio Manager, before taking over the Alpha Plus Fund in 2019.
Jun Bei completed a commerce degree at the University of NSW, followed by a number of additional finance credentials including GAICD and CFA. She is a prolific contributor to Australia’s financial services sector, writing a regular column for the AFR and making frequent appearances for key media outlets and as a speaker at industry events. Jun Bei enjoys sharing her knowledge and love for markets with investors and promotes the growth of like-minded females within the financial services community by providing mentor opportunities and serving on the advisory committee for Australian Student Asset Management. Jun Bei is a TEDX speaker, has been appointed as a Core Fund Manager for Hearts and Minds Investments Ltd (HM1) and volunteers for the Raise Foundation Board.
She is fluent in Mandarin and English, only learning English as a 16-year-old, when she emigrated to Australia from China.
Tribeca Investment Partners
Professor Daniel MacArthur is the Director of the Centre for Population Genomics (CPG), a joint initiative of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne. The CPG was established to solve the critical scientific, regulatory, and technical problems currently limiting the development of genomic medicine in Australia, and to execute large-scale projects that will establish Australia’s leadership in this field.
Daniel previously served as Co-Director of the Medical and Population Genetics Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and headed up a team jointly based at the Broad Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. He co-directed the Broad Institute's Centre for Mendelian Genomics, which has sequenced and analysed genomic data from over 10,000 individuals from rare disease families and contributed to the discovery of more than 100 new rare disease genes. He also led the development of the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD), the largest and most widely-used data set of human exome and genome sequence data, which has collated data from over 140,000 sequenced individuals.
Centre for Population Genomics, Garvan Institute of Medical Research and Murdoch Children's Research Institute
After 10 years working in finance in the US and London, Steven relocated to Sydney in 2002 where he launched and sold several successful businesses.
After realising that there was a genuine gap in the Australian market for fresh, clean Mexican food, Steven founded the first Guzman y Gomez restaurant in Newtown, Sydney. His vision was to build a restaurant business that had the speed and convenience of fast food but to re-invent the fast food category by never compromising on the quality, only using the freshest and best ingredients. Today GYG is one of the world’s fastest growing QSR businesses with plans to open 40 restaurants per year and operates 202+ restaurants in Australia, Singapore, Japan and the US.
In October 2023, Steven appointed Hilton Brett as Co-Ceo of GYG. Steven remains the Founder and co-CEO of the business globally and is firmly focussed on maintaining GYG’s unique energy and culture. He is a committed philanthropist raising millions of dollars and actively supporting Mision Mexico, a charity in Mexico dedicated to ending poverty for the youth of Mexico.
Guzman y Gomez
Kieran Moore joined Munro Partners at its inception in July 2016.
Kieran is responsible for championing stock ideas and managing these positions within the portfolio. Kieran has specialised in global growth equities for the last 10 years. Over his career, Kieran has undertaken additional functions within the investment team, including risk management, portfolio analytics and trading.
Key career highlights include, 10 years working in funds management, Senior Investment Analyst at Munro Partners (2017-18) and Investment Analyst at K2 Asset Management (2014-16).
Kieran is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne, with majors in Finance and Economics, and also a Juris Doctor Law Degree from the University of Melbourne.
Munro Partners
Tom Naughton is the CIO and Managing Partner of Prusik Investment Management LLP. He joined Prusik in 2010 to launch the Prusik Asian Equity Income Fund (PAEIF) which, since launch, has outperformed the index by 4x, resulting in him winning multiple awards. PAEIF follows a research based, value biased approach to identify stocks that can sustain and grow their dividends over time, which means the upside potential is significant relative to downside risk.
Before joining Prusik, Tom was the CIO for Equities at PMA Investment Advisors in Hong Kong – a multi-strategy hedge fund. Tom received a BSc in Mathematics with Economics from University College London and has completed several ultramarathons across the globe.
Tom and his wife, Amanda, set up a Global Health Fund with the UCL Institute for Global Health (IGH) and they also fund a Mathematics Scholarship to enable students in financial need to pursue their postgraduate studies.
Prusik Investment Management
Sheila Patel is Co-Chair of Antler’s Advisory Board and Vice Chair of B Capital’s Advisory Board. Sheila brings thirty years of experience in financial markets, most recently serving as Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Sheila served on Goldman Sachs’ Firmwide Management Committee, Partnership Committee, Inclusion & Diversity Committee and led ESG and Sustainability initiatives. She held leadership roles in 2 divisions and on 3 continents.
She is in Milken’s Executive Circle, an Angel sponsor of 100 Women in Finance, and on multiple Princeton University Leadership councils and is a former board member of Pacific Pension & Investment Institute.
She holds degrees with the highest honors from Princeton and Columbia and was named Investment Woman of the Year by Investment Week in 2020, a Financial News’ 100 Women in Finance in 2019, and a Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Asia in 2015. She has spoken at some of the most prestigious gatherings, including the Davos World Economic Forum, IFSWF, and the Milken Global Conference, and her views have appeared in influential media outlets, such as CNBC, Bloomberg, the NY Times, WSJ, FT and AFR.
Antler
Before starting Verdad, Dan worked at Bain Capital Private Equity and Bridgewater Associates. He is a member of the investment committee of the Trustees of Donations of the Episcopal Church, is the New York Times bestselling author of American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt, and in 2017, was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Dan is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and his investment research has been featured in multiple volumes of The Best Investment Writing. Dan earned an AB from Harvard College summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Verdad
Mr Samild joined the Future Fund in 2013 and was appointed to Chief Investment Officer in August 2023. In his former role (June 2022 – July 2023) as Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Portfolio Strategy, Ben led work on portfolio construction and dynamic asset allocation, the integration of overall portfolio insights with sector specific opportunities, and the development of views on emerging markets. Prior to this, Ben was the Future Fund’s Head of Alternatives with responsibility for the investment of over $30 billion of capital across a range of hedge fund and other skill based absolute return strategies.
Before joining the Future Fund he had a ten-year career in the hedge fund industry, and four years as Head of Investment Strategy at Industry Super Fund LUCRF Super. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Melbourne majoring in behavioural finance, psychology and history. He also worked as a research fellow while completing a Masters in Applied Finance.
Future Fund
Ricky Sandler founded Eminence Capital in 1999. Today, Eminence is a ~$7.0B global investment management organization. As the CIO of Eminence, Ricky is responsible for managing a team of over 20 investment professionals and a diversified portfolio across most sectors of the market. Prior to launching Eminence, Ricky was co-founder and co-general partner of Fusion Capital Management, LLC. Prior to that he was a research analyst covering a wide range of industries and companies for Mark Asset Management, where he began his investing career in 1991. Ricky received a BBA in Accounting and Finance from the University of Wisconsin, graduating with honors. He currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the University of Wisconsin Foundation and as a member of its Development Committee, Investment Committee and Traditional Asset Subcommittee. Ricky Sandler is also a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts.
Eminence Capital
Michelle Simmons is CEO and Founder of Silicon Quantum Computing and Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology in Sydney.
She is internationally recognised as the creator of the new field of atomic electronics. For over a quarter century, she has pioneered new technologies to manufacture computing devices in silicon atom by atom. Her work led to the invention of the first single atom transistor in 2012, and to the world’s first integrated circuit in silicon manufactured at the atomic-scale, which is now being commercialised as the basis for a new generation of quantum computers. Michelle’s discoveries are powering the transition from the digital to the quantum age, placing Australia at the forefront of the global race to develop a quantum computer.
Michelle has received over 30 globally recognised awards over her career to date and is a passionate advocate and mentor for young scientists in Australia.
Silicon Quantum Computing
Ashish co-founded Aikya along with a few colleagues in March 2020. Previously he worked for Stewart Investors in London.
Ashish joined the predecessor business of Stewart Investors in 2014. During his time at Stewart Investors Ashish was Lead Manager on Emerging Markets and Asia Pacific strategies, including Stewart Investors Emerging Markets Leaders Fund.
He was with Fidelity between 2004 and 2014. In 2008, he launched an Emerging Markets Equity Strategy with high-quality companies, which became Fidelity Institutional Asset Management (FIAM) EM All Cap in 2010. He managed this strategy until his departure in 2014.
Ashish has a degree in Electronics & Communications Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, a Post Graduate Diploma from Indian Institute of Management, and holds an MBA from INSEAD in France.
Aikya
Holly Ransom is an award-winning keynote speaker, master interviewer, author, and leadership expert. Holly is the CEO of Emergent; Author of The Leading Edge; Co-Founder, Chief Curator and Catalyst at Energy Disruptors; Non-executive Director at Port Adelaide Football Club; Board member of Pride Cup,and Hudson.
As an accomplished company director, Holly has compressed a power-packed career into a decade, spanning corporate, non-profit, and public sectors.
Holly Ransom has led discussions with influential figures such as Barack Obama, Malcolm Gladwell, Billie Jean-King, and Julia Gillard. Holly was named one of Australia’s 100 Most Influential Women by the Australian Financial Review and awarded the US Embassy’s Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Leadership Excellence in 2019.
Emergent Global
Cathie registered ARK Investment Management LLC (“ARK”) as an investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2014. With over 40 years of experience identifying and investing in innovation, Cathie founded ARK to focus solely on disruptive innovation while adding new dimensions to research. Through an open approach that cuts across sectors, market capitalizations, and geographies, Cathie believes that ARK can identify large-scale investment opportunities in the public markets resulting from technological innovations centered around DNA sequencing, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy storage, and blockchain technology. As Chief Investment Officer (“CIO”) and Portfolio Manager, Cathie led the development of ARK’s philosophy and investment approach and has ultimate responsibility for investment decisions.
Prior to ARK, Cathie spent twelve years at AllianceBernstein as CIO of Global Thematic Strategies where she managed over $5 billion. Cathie joined Alliance Capital from Tupelo Capital Management, a hedge fund she co-founded, which in 2000, managed approximately $800 million in global thematic strategies. Prior to her tenure at Tupelo Capital, she worked for 18 years with Jennison Associates LLC as Chief Economist, Equity Research Analyst, Portfolio Manager and Director. She started her career in Los Angeles, California at The Capital Group as an Assistant Economist. Cathie received her Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, in Finance and Economics from the University of Southern California in 1981.
Cathie has been recognized as an influential fund manager across various outlets. In 2018, editors at Bloomberg acknowledged Cathie by selecting her to its second annual Bloomberg 50 list of people across business, entertainment, finance, politics, technology, and science who have defined global business. Additionally, Fortune named Cathie to its exclusive roundtable of experts in the annual Fortune Investors Guide: The Best Investing Advice for 2019 From Fortune’s Experts. In 2016, Cathie received the “Women in Finance – Outstanding Contribution Award” from Market Media. Cathie also has been a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum (China) in 2016 & 2017, the World Strategic Forum (Miami) in 2017, The Sohn Hearts and Minds Investment Leaders Conference (Australia) in 2018 and 2019, and Singularity University’s Exponential Finance in 2017 and Global Summit in 2019.
In 2018, Cathie launched the Duddy Innovation Institute at her alma mater, Notre Dame Academy in Los Angeles. The institute offers a challenging educational experience for young women eager to stretch their learning beyond the boundaries of traditional acquisition of knowledge, while influencing a new way of thinking and learning throughout campus.
ARK Invest
William Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, when he was denied entry to the country and declared “a threat to national security” for exposing corruption in Russian state-owned companies.
In 2008, Mr. Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a massive fraud committed by Russian government officials that involved the theft of US $230 million of state taxes. Sergei testified against state officials involved in this fraud and was subsequently arrested, imprisoned without trial and systematically tortured. He spent a year in prison under horrific detention conditions, was repeatedly denied medical treatment, and died in prison on November 16, 2009, leaving behind a wife and two children.
Since then, Mr. Browder has sought justice outside of Russia and started a global campaign for governments around the world to impose targeted visa bans and asset freezes on human rights abusers and highly corrupt officials. The United States was the first to impose these targeted sanctions with the passage of the Sergei Magnitsky Accountability Act in 2012, followed by the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act in 2016.
Since then, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Baltic states, the European Union and most recently Australia have passed their own versions of the Magnitsky Act. Mr. Browder is currently working to have similar legislation passed in other countries worldwide including New Zealand and Japan, to name a few.
Hermitage Capital Management (UK)
Luke Harding is an award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian and a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian's Moscow bureau chief; the Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the Cold War. He is the author of numerous books, including Shadow State, Collusion, A Very Expensive Poison and The Snowden Files, as well as the co-author of WikiLeaks and The Liar (nominated for the Orwell Prize). Two of Harding's books have been made into films: The Fifth Estate and Snowden.
The Guardian (UK)
Ramez Naam is the Managing Partner of PlanetaryVC, which invests in startups addressing the world’s greatest challenges. Ramez has spent the past decade investing in climate and energy technologies and speaking around the world on innovation, exponential technology and the future of energy and climate in particular. He serves as the Co-Chair for Energy and Environment for Singularity University and was among the first people to forecast the exponential cost decline of clean energy technologies such as solar, batteries and electric vehicles.
Ramez has advised the CEOs and executives of the world’s largest energy companies. He is also the award-winning author of 5 books, including the Nexus trilogy of science fiction novels. Before moving into energy and climate, Ramez spent 13 years at Microsoft, working on AI. He’s the author of more than 20 patents, several co-invented with Bill Gates.
PlanetaryVC (USA)
David Walsh is the creator of Mona (a museum in Tasmania which once received an honourable mention in an engineering award won by a toilet block in Launceston). He is an art collector, professional gambler and writer. He is a Virgo, ruled by Mercury and compatible with Pisces and Cancer. He despises astrology, and public toilets in Launceston. At present, Hollywood has no plans for a movie about his life.
Mona
Journalist and Broadcaster
Gerry Cardinale is the Founder, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of RedBird Capital Partners.
RedBird manages $6 billion of equity on behalf of a select group of blue-chip institutional and family office investors. The firm’s prior and current investment portfolio includes many of the world’s most iconic entrepreneurs, properties and brands across the sports, media and entertainment industries – including Fenway Sports Group (Boston Red Sox, Liverpool FC, Pittsburgh Penguins, New England Sports Network); the Yankees Entertainment & Sports (“YES”) Network (New York Yankees and Amazon); Skydance Media (Larry and David Ellison); The Springhill Company (LeBron James and Maverick Carter); the XFL (Dwayne Johnson and his partner Dany Garcia); and European football’s A.C. Milan which recently won Italy’s Serie A Championship.
Since the firm’s inception, RedBird has also been an active investor and company builder in Financial Services - a core competency of the firm with a dedicated investment team that has invested over $1 billion across Insurance & Insurance Distribution, Asset & Wealth Management and Fintech & Insurtech. Notable investments include Aquarian, a diversified life and annuity insurance carrier with over $7 billion of assets and an affiliated asset manager; and Constellation, a managing general agent insurance distribution platform that RedBird scaled to a top 5 player in the industry in under two years before exiting to Truist in July 2021.
Prior to founding RedBird in 2014, Gerry spent 20 years at Goldman Sachs where he was a Partner of the firm and a senior leader of the Merchant Bank’s private equity investing business. During his tenure, Gerry worked with entrepreneurs and family business owners to build several successful multi-billion-dollar companies, including the Yankees Entertainment & Sports (“YES”) Network, Legends Hospitality, and Suddenlink Communications.
In addition to his broad responsibilities as Chief Investment Officer, Gerry is actively engaged in company-building activities across the firm’s portfolio in its core industries of Sports, Media & Entertainment and Financial Services. He is also active in driving RedBird’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion within the firm as well as within the investment portfolio. Accordingly, 50% of the firm’s investment professionals and 30% of CEOs in its most recent fund are either female or diverse.
Philanthropically, Gerry is a Trustee of the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City and leads one of the multistate Selection Committees that awards Rhodes Scholarships each year. Gerry received an Honours BA from Harvard University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and an M.Phil in Politics and Political Theory from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
RedBird Capital Partners
Kara is a Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures, the largest venture capital firm based in Los Angeles. Some of her notable investments include Parachute Home, Time by Ping, Endgame, Writer, Open Raven, Britive, and Fleetsmith (acquired by Apple in 2020). Over 50% of her portfolio is led by women CEOs. Kara is also a founding member of All Raise, a VC-led group dedicated to increased diversity in funders and founders and is a founder of LA’s women’s soccer team, Angel City Football Club.
Before Upfront, Kara co-founded the children's e-commerce company Moonfrye and also spent seven years at IAC where she co-headed the M&A group and acted as the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Urbanspoon and Citysearch. During her tenure at IAC she led the initial investment in Tinder. Earlier in her career, she also spent time at Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, and Battery Ventures.
She received her AB in Politics from Princeton University and her MBA from Stanford University. Kara resides in Los Angeles with her husband and three daughters.
Upfront Ventures
Matt was a professional Australian Cricket representative and spent five years at the Victorian Institute of Sport as a coach and player, until injury forced his retirement - turning his attention to business.
With multiple successful exits, Matt has been involved with many high growth digital ventures in Australia, USA & UK in varying roles from founder, executive, to advisor, corporate development lead, investor and board member.
Matt Co-Founded Unlockd, a transformational venture that in ~3 years went from concept to $20m+ ARR (and a $200m market cap) nearly reaching ASX listing before interference by Google after launching in multiple markets internationally including USA, UK, India, Indonesia, Australia and UAE.
Currently, Matt is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of RealVC - an Early Stage Technology Venture Capital Fund.
Matt is also the Chair of Mental Health Australia, the peak body representing the mental health sector and wider community.
RealVC
Ed spent a decade and a half as a professional cricketer around the world (including most of that in Tasmania) in a career that included 18 Test matches for Australia. His passion for both investing and high-performing cultures led him to start the next stage of his career at TDM Growth Partners, one of Australia’s best performing fund managers, having compounded capital at over 25% for 17 years. TDM is a Hearts and Minds Core Manager.
Ed is well placed to moderate the panel “Investing in Sport as an Asset Class” as he currently serves on the Board of Directors of Cricket NSW and can be heard on the wireless across the summer via the ABC.
TDM Growth Partners
Anthony is the Portfolio Manager of Industrial Shares, SHARE-PLUS Long-Short and Co-Portfolio Manager of Perpetual Pure Equity Alpha.
Anthony has been with Perpetual for 10 years. Prior to joining Perpetual, he worked at Ellerston Capital for 6 years, where he was the Portfolio Manager for the Ellerston Capital Global Equity Management Fund for 2 years. Before that, he spent 4 years as an Analyst working on a long/short strategy. Prior to joining Ellerston Capital, Anthony worked as an Analyst at UBS Investment Bank for 8 years.
Anthony has a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney and has earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
Perpetual
Bob is a seasoned investor in global markets and has been refining his quality growth process for more than 27 years.
Zimbabwean born, Bob has lived and worked in Africa, the UK and Australia. He started his career with Anglo American and Fleming Martin in Africa, before joining Seilern Investment Management in London in 2002 as a Portfolio Manager and Head of Research.
He joined Claremont Global in 2012 as Senior Research Analyst and in 2017 was appointed Head of Claremont Global and Co-Portfolio Manager.
Bob leads Claremont with an egalitarian approach, empowering the team to individually play to their strengths within a highly collaborative environment.
He holds a BA in Politics and Economics from the University of Western Australia and is a CFA Charterholder.
Claremont Global
Catherine Allfrey is a Portfolio Manager and Principal at WaveStone Capital which she co-founded in 2006. Along with portfolio management responsibilities, Catherine is a specialist across the Banks, Diversified Financials & Media sectors.
Prior to founding WaveStone Capital, Catherine has had various roles in financial services, most recently at Colonial First State Investments which she joined as an investment analyst in the GDP Plus team in 1998 before becoming a Portfolio Manager in 2002, managing a top 20 concentrated Australian fund and a Sector Neutral fund.
Catherine was named Investment Manager of the Year at the 2017 Women in Finance Awards and was the first woman inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Australian Fund Manager Awards.
WaveStone Capital
Professor Fay Johnston is a public health physician and environmental epidemiologist who heads the Environmental Health Research group at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania; and is a senior Specialist Medical Advisor for the Tasmanian Department of Health.
She has made major contributions to global knowledge about the health impacts of bushfire smoke, and her expert testimony shaped many recommendations for government policy following the air pollution emergencies during Australia’s Black Summer bushfires in 2019/2020.
Professor Johnston’s team developed AirRater, a real-time environmental and symptom surveillance system designed to support self-management for people with health conditions sensitive to outdoor airborne hazards like smoke and pollen. AirRater was downloaded more than 50,000 times during the Black Summer emergency and has won multiple awards for innovation, impact, and community disaster resilience.
Professor Johnston frequently provides expert advice for government agencies, community organisations, media, and legal proceedings for issues and incidents relating to air quality.
Photo Credit: Nikki Davis Jones, The Mercury
Menzies Institute for Medical Research
Fred is the Founder of Samuel Terry Asset Management, which manages a $500m fund. The fund invests in a concentrated portfolio of about 20 names in Australia and overseas. It invests across the capital structure, including debt, equity and options. Samuel Terry does not consider itself an activist investor, but has been involved in a variety of proxy fights and has made several takeover bids.
Prior to establishing Samuel Terry in 2003, Fred worked in London as a Director and Portfolio Manager of Hunter Hall, an Australian fund manager. Before that, he ran a family office in Monaco. Fred started his career in 1981 as an office boy in a stockbroking firm and then worked on the trading floor of the Sydney Stock Exchange.
Fred has an Economics degree from the University of Sydney.
Samuel Terry Asset Management
James Miller is a Founding Partner and Portfolio Manager at Firetrail, a high conviction investment firm managing more than $6bn in Australian and global equities.
James has more than 15 years’ experience as a Portfolio Manager and Analyst. Prior to founding Firetrail, James was the co-lead Portfolio Manager of the award-winning Macquarie High Conviction Fund, Macquarie Australia Plus Fund, and Macquarie Pure Alpha Fund.
Today, James is a Portfolio Manager for the Firetrail S3 Global Opportunities Fund which is a concentrated portfolio of Firetrail’s best global ideas with a sustainable edge.
Firetrail Investments
Professor Jason Kovacic is the Executive Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. He graduated from The University of Melbourne Medical School in 1994, and then undertook residency and cardiology specialty training in interventional cardiology at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, becoming a Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2003. Jason then completed a PhD in cardiovascular medicine at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
In 2007, he was elected as a Fellow of The American College of Cardiology and relocated to the USA, to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. At the NIH, Professor Kovacic discovered critical new pathways that lead to blockage of the body’s blood vessels. He then moved to The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. In parallel with his vital ongoing research to define new ways to prevent and treat vascular disease, Professor Kovacic is a practising clinical cardiologist, specialising in vascular disease and blockages of the heart arteries.
He has authored numerous scientific and clinical papers on heart and vascular disease and serves on several NIH committees. He has a particular interest in unravelling the pathobiology of the vascular diseases, fibromuscular dysplasia and spontaneous coronary artery dissection.
In addition to his many achievements in medicine and in biomedical research, Professor Kovacic was an elite athlete, having been a world-class rower, plays classical guitar and speaks several languages.
Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute
Joyce is the Founder of FACT Capital (FACT stands for Fairness, Alignment, Compounding, and Transparency), which innovates on the hedge fund model and applies ‘first principles’ thinking to investment framework, portfolio/research transparency, technology use, and incentive alignment for long term compounding. Prior to FACT, Joyce was Partner at Vernier Capital and Research Analyst at MSD Capital and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners. Joyce graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Huntsman Program of the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a BA in International Studies and a BS in Economics from the Wharton School.
Joyce received the Rhodes Scholarship and graduated with Distinction from Oxford University with an MSc in Financial Economics and an MSc in Economics for Development.
Joyce was also recognized as Forbes 30 under 30 (2014) and Wharton 40 under 40 (2015). She speaks Mandarin and Spanish fluently. As hobbies, she volunteers with Givology - a 100% volunteer-driven non-profit she co-founded in 2008, enjoys reading, and plays ice hockey.
FACT Capital (USA)
Jun Bei Liu is the Portfolio Manager of Tribeca’s Alpha Plus Fund. Since taking over sole responsibility for managing the Fund, she has doubled AUM to over $1bn, making it one of the largest long short equity funds in the Australian market. She is a passionate, motivated, and dedicated investment manager having built a 16-year career at Tribeca, starting as an equity analyst and spending time several years as a Portfolio Manager before taking over the Alpha Plus Fund in 2019.
Jun Bei has always had a keen interest in financial markets and the challenges they present. She is fluent in Chinese and only learned English as a teenager upon leaving China and emigrating to Australia as a 16-year-old. Her commitment to self-improvement saw her complete a commerce degree at the University of NSW followed by a number of additional finance credentials including GAICD and CFA. She has strong family values and has managed to build her career while also juggling family life and raising two young children.
She is a prolific contributor to Australia’s financial services sector, writing a regular column for the AFR and making frequent appearances for key media outlets and as a speaker at industry events. She especially enjoys the opportunity to share her knowledge and love for markets with investors and has a keen interest in helping promote the growth of like-minded females within the financial services community where she enjoys playing a mentoring role via serving on the advisory committee for Australian Student Asset Management. Her early childhood has given her an energy for life and a strong desire to contribute to society, particularly those who are less privileged. She is a volunteer for Raise Foundation Board and continues to look for opportunities where she can share her experience and network to benefit others.
Tribeca Investment Partners
Nick is a Founding Partner and the Chief Investment Officer of Munro Partners.
Nick is responsible for the investment management of Munro’s key investment funds and the formulation and implementation of the proprietary investment process.
Nick has over 20 years experience working in financial services and has been managing global long / short equity mandates for over 15 years.
Nick was Head of International Strategy on the K2 Select International Absolute Return Fund 2005‐2015, a Member of the K2 Asset Management Asset Allocation and Currency Exposure Committee, Senior Analyst (Global Oil and Gas) at Deutsche Bank UK 2000‐2005 and Manager Australian Equities for Commonwealth Financial Services 1996‐1999.
Nick holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) degree from the University of Melbourne, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment and a Registered Representative of the Sydney Futures Exchange.
Munro Partners
Peter founded Cooper Investors in 2001. As Chief Investment Officer, Peter created and implemented the firm’s VoF investment philosophy which is applied across the international, domestic and Asian equities strategies. He is responsible for mentoring investment team members and the standardisation and integration of the process across the investment teams.
Peter has over 30 years of investment management experience. In 1987 he joined the NSW State Superannuation Investment and Management Corporation as a Specialist Industry Analyst and progressed to Deputy Portfolio Manager of the $7bn portfolio. In 1993 Peter ran the Australian equities portfolios for BNP and then joined Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (formerly Mercury Asset Management) where he worked for 7 years, culminating in his position as Head of Australian Equities and Managing Director where he oversaw a team managing $7.5bn in Australian equities.
BBus (Ec), Grad.Dip. Fin Mgt., F Fin, AICD, CA
Cooper Investors
Ricky founded Eminence Capital in 1999. Today, Eminence is a ~$5.7bn global investment management organisation investing client capital across global financial markets as well as private equity markets. As CEO and CIO of Eminence, Ricky is responsible for setting the firm’s strategic direction as well as directly managing its 20+ person investment team and diversified investment portfolio. Prior to launching Eminence, Ricky was Co-Founder and Co-General Partner of Fusion Capital Management, LLC. Prior to that he was a research analyst covering a wide range of industries and companies for Mark Asset Management, where he began his investing career in 1991. Ricky received a BBA in Accounting and Finance graduating with Honours from the University of Wisconsin. Ricky has served as a Board member for the University of Wisconsin Foundation and as a member of its Development Committee, Investment Committee and Traditional Asset Subcommittee. Ricky is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.
Eminence Capital (USA)
Tim is a founder of Auscap Asset Management, which has been running successfully since inception 10 years ago.
He has 18 years’ experience in the financial services industry. He has managed the Auscap Long Short Australian Equities Fund since 2012. From 2007 to 2011 he was an executive director at Goldman Sachs where he was responsible for managing an Australian equities long short portfolio using proprietary funds. Prior to 2007 he worked at Macquarie Bank within the investment banking group.
Tim is a CFA charterholder, a CMT charterholder, a Senior Associate of FINSIA, a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and has a Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours) from the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Sydney.
Auscap Asset Management
Tim is Portfolio Manager and Head of Mining Investments at Regal. Prior to joining Regal in January 2018 he spent almost 8 years at Glencore, where as Executive General Manager - Business Development & Strategy, he was Global Head of M&A for the largest division and led a series of landmark transactions. Prior to this Tim spent almost 5 years as an investment banker specialising in mining takeovers & acquisitions as well as capital raisings.
Tim holds a triple degree in Commerce (Finance), Engineering and Laws from the University of Melbourne. He is a CFA Charterholder and completed the General Management Program at Harvard Business School in 2016.
Regal Funds Management
Charlie was born in Omaha, Nebraska on January 1, 1924, graduated from Omaha Central High School in 1941, attended the University of Michigan and Cal Tech (under Air Force auspices), served as 2nd Lieutenant (Meteorologist) in the Air Force in World War II, and received a J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from the Harvard Law School in 1948. He practiced law in Los Angeles from 1948 to 1965, during which time he helped found the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson (in 1962). Since 1965, he has been engaged in a variety of businesses, after 1975 primarily as an officer and director of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and various subsidiaries but also at Daily Journal Corporation (publisher of California’s leading newspaper for lawyers). He is Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (under Warren E. Buffett) and Chairman of Daily Journal Corporation. The public companies of which he is a director are: Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Daily Journal Corporation, and Costco Wholesale Corporation.
Became a Trustee of Good Samaritan Hospital from 1979 and has served as Chairman from November 1987 to December 2020. Trustee (and former Chairman) of Harvard-Westlake School 1969 to date. Trustee and Chief Financial Officer of Planned Parenthood, Los Angeles, 1967-1993 (approximately). Founder and President of The Alfred C. Munger Foundation.
Berkshire Hathaway
Robert Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member.
He has written over 1,500 articles, which have been cited over 355,000 times; his h-index of 295 is the highest of any engineer in history and tied for the 4th highest of any individual in any field. His patents have licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies; he is a cofounder of a number of companies including Moderna.
Dr Langer served as Chairman of the FDA’s Science Board (its highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. His over 220 awards include both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (he is one of 3 living individuals to have received both these honors), the Charles Stark Draper Prize (often called the Engineering Nobel Prize), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Albany Medical Center Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Kyoto Prize, Wolf Prize for Chemistry, Millennium Technology Prize, Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), Gairdner Prize, and the Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences.
He holds 36 honorary doctorates and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors.
MIT Langer Lab
Mark Nelson is Chairman and Co-founder of Caledonia, a specialist global investment manager founded in 1992 and based in Sydney, Australia. Mark was educated at the Universities of Melbourne, and Cambridge, receiving his Doctorate in 1986.
Dr Nelson has over 30 years experience working in Australian and International investment and equity markets, analysing and assessing the business models of global companies in a wide variety of industries.
He is currently Chairman of Art Exhibitions Australia, a Director of Kaldor Public Art Projects, and Chairman of Cricket NSW Foundation. He is also a governor of the Florey Institute of Neuroscience,a Director of the MindGardens Neuroscience Alliance, and a Director of Telix Pharmaceuticals. He serves on the International Council of the Tate Museums in London, and the Directors Council of The Getty Museum in Los Angeles and a Trustee of The Sydney Swans Foundation. Previously he was Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation.
Caledonia Investments
Lawrence Gozlan is a leading biotechnology investor and advisor, he is the Chief Investment Officer and Founder of Scientia Capital, a specialised global investment fund focused exclusively in life sciences.
Scientia was founded to provide high level expertise and to manage investments for high net worth individuals, family offices and institutional investors wanting exposure to the life sciences industry. Prior to this, Mr Gozlan was responsible for the largest biotechnology investment portfolio in Australia as the institutional biotechnology analyst at QIC (“the Queensland Investment Corporation”), an investment fund with over $60 billion under management. He previously worked as the senior biotechnology analyst in the equities team at Foster Stockbroking, and gained senior corporate finance experience advising life science companies at Deloitte. Mr Gozlan is a Non-Executive Director of Opthea Limited, a public biotechnology company listed on the ASX. Mr Gozlan holds a Bachelor of Science with Honors in microbiology and immunology from the University of Melbourne.
Scientia Capital
Philip King is the Chief Investment Officer and co-founder of Regal Funds Management.
Founded in 2004, Regal Funds Management is a multi-award winning specialist alternatives investment manager, with offices located in Sydney and Singapore. The business manages over $3bn in capital on behalf of institutions, family offices, charities and private investors.
Philip is widely recognised as a pioneer of the Australian alternative investment industry, having successfully launched and managed absolute return vehicles at Regal for over 17 years. In 2019, Philip was inducted into the Australian Fund Managers Hall of Fame.
Regal Funds Management
Qiao Ma joined CI in July 2017. Prior to this, she spent seven years investing in the technology and consumers sectors in Asia and the US. Most recently she was the Head of Asia for Jericho Capital, a multi-billion dollar global investment fund based in New York. Qiao has also previously worked at Coatue Management, a New York based investment fund specializing in global technology and consumer sectors and a spinoff of Tiger Management. From 2006 to 2008 Qiao worked in the Financial Institutions Group in the Investment Banking Division of Lehman Brothers.
Qiao Ma has been the Portfolio Manager for Asian Equities since May 2018. She is also an equity holder of firm, and part of CI’s future leadership team. Prior to joining CI in July 2017, Qiao spent nearly a decade investing Asian and Global Equities for large US hedge funds based in New York, including Jericho Capital and Coatue Management. Born in China, Qiao moved to the United States as a teenager. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS from University of Virginia.
Cooper Investors
At his core, Hamish loves helping people create futures they never thought possible. As a coach, mentor, and co-founder of TDM Growth Partners, he brings a multitude of experience from top-tier investment firms as well as from his hiatus as a school guidance counsellor. Hamish’s innate leadership skills, broad life experiences, and full-throttle approach to life have been a driving force to the TDM culture of success. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Somnomed (ASX:SOM) and Tyro Payments (ASX: TYR) and has significant experience in investing in fast-growing software and FinTech businesses.
TDM Growth Partners is an global investment firm, investing in fast growing companies run by passionate management teams. TDM’s unique and flexible mandate allows investment in public and private companies, with a highly focused approach of no more than 15 businesses globally.
TDM Growth Partners
Babak Poushanchi is a Founder and Managing Partner of Cota Capital, an investment firm based in San Francisco, focused on the technology sector.
Babak has spent the majority of his career investing in private and public companies. Prior to founding Cota, Babak was a Co-Founder and Co-Portfolio Manager of Newbrook Capital, a global equity long/short fund based in New York City. Previously, Babak was an Investment Analyst at Karsch Capital, a global long/short fund based in New York City. He was also a Venture Partner at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, an early-stage technology accelerator with over 100 portfolio companies, and an Investment Associate at lndosuez Capital, a U.S.-based merchant banking fund investing in private companies across the capital structure.
Babak holds a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University.
Cota Capital
Tekne Capital Management, LLC (‘Tekne’) is a fundamental equity manager that focuses on investing in technology, media, digital consumer, payments, and telecommunications businesses globally. Tekne was founded in 2012 by Beeneet Kothari who is its Managing Partner and Principal Portfolio Manager. Tekne manages a concentrated portfolio of global, liquid, publicly listed securities. The team has developed what we believe to be a repeatable and scalable investment process. We take a long-term view on investing and have low idea turnover. The team conducts research and diligence to identify securities which are at a significant discount or premium to their long-term intrinsic business value.
Prior to founding Tekne, Beeneet Kothari was a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at PointState Capital, a multi-billion dollar global macro investment firm. Before joining PointState at launch in January 2011, Mr. Kothari was a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at Duquesne Capital Management, a thirty-year old investment firm founded by Stanley F. Druckenmiller. At Duquesne, Mr. Kothari managed a global technology, media and telecom portfolio and helped manage the fund’s overall technology exposure. He joined Duquesne as an analyst in September 2005 and became Managing Director four years later in 2009. Prior to joining Duquesne, Mr. Kothari worked at Morgan Stanley as an investment banking analyst after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s joint-degree program in Management and Technology with dual degrees from Wharton and Engineering, and also earned a Master’s in Biotechnology, in four years. He graduated with honors including the prestigious Dean’s Award for excellence from Wharton, awarded to the top student in each graduating class. Mr. Kothari lives in New York City with his wife and two children.
Tekne Capital Management
Eleanor is a Founding Partner at Firetrail, a boutique investment manager specialising in high conviction equity investing. Her primary responsibility is Investment Manager of the Firetrail Australian Small Companies Fund. Eleanor has a unique background in both Commerce and Science, with majors in Finance and Immunobiology. She has deep analytical experience in the Australian Healthcare, Technology and Consumer Sectors.
Prior to establishing Firetrail in 2018, Eleanor and senior members of the Firetrail investment team worked together at Macquarie, managing the highly successful Macquarie High Conviction Fund. Eleanor is a passionate investor, who loves uncovering both undervalued companies and companies with significant long term growth potential. In her spare time, Eleanor is an avid tennis player and runner. She holds a Combined Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Sydney and is a CFA Charter holder.
Firetrail Investments
David Allingham is a Portfolio Manager and Principal at Eley Griffiths Group and has over 17 years’ experience analysing small and emerging companies. Prior to joining Eley Griffiths Group in 2004, David worked in marketing at EMI Music Australia. David was educated at Sydney Grammar School and holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Sydney.
Eley Griffiths Group
Gavin Baker is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Atreides Management, LP. Prior to founding Atreides in 2019, Gavin was at Fidelity Investments from 1999 – 2017, most recently as the portfolio manager of the Fidelity OTC Fund from 2009 – 2017. The $17 billion Fidelity OTC Fund outperformed 100% of its Morningstar peers and won 6 Lipper awards over Gavin’s 8-year tenure as portfolio manager.
Gavin was the Boston Globe’s Fund Manager of the Year in 2014 and his performance was recognized by articles in Barron’s, the New York Times, Investors Business Daily and the Wall Street Journal. He helped spearhead Fidelity’s venture capital investing and was a board observer at Nutanix, 23andME, Jet.com, AppNexus, Dataminr and Roku, among others. Gavin earned an AB in economics and history from Dartmouth College.
Atreides Management
Jay Kahn founded Flight Deck Capital in April 2020. Flight Deck is a fundamental long/short TMT hybrid fund that invests in disruptive public and private companies across the U.S., Japan, Korea, SE Asia, Latin America, and Europe. The firm makes concentrated, long-term investments by leveraging relationships with entrepreneurs, VCs, and growth investors globally to identify secular change.
Prior to launching Flight Deck, Jay was a Partner at Light Street Capital from 2011-2020 where he ran the firm’s internet, media, and consumer investments globally. In addition to managing Light Street’s public investments in these sectors, Jay also spearheaded the firm’s investments in private companies, leading or co-leading 14 private deals across Light Street’s side pockets, SPVs, and later stage growth fund including: Unity, Uber, Lyft, Spotify, Pinterest, Everlane, Harry’s, Boxed, Toast, EzCater, Madeira Madeira, SmartHR, Slack, and Blackbuck. From 2006-2008, Jay was an Associate at Elevation Partners, where he evaluated late stage growth and buyout investments in internet, media, music, gaming, and sports.
Jay earned an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2010, and a B.A. magna cum laude in Quantitative Economics from Tufts University in 2002.
Flight Deck Capital
Joyce is the Founder of FACT Capital (FACT stands for Fairness, Alignment, Compounding, and Transparency), which innovatives on the hedge fund model and applies 'first principles' thinking to investment framework, portfolio/research transparency, technology use, and incentive alignment for long term compounding.
Prior to FACT, Joyce was Partner at Vernier Capital and Research Analyst at MSD Capital and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners.
Joyce graduated summa cum laude from the Huntsman Program of the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a BA in International Studies and a BS in Economics from the Wharton School. Joyce received the Rhodes Scholarship and graduated with distinction from Oxford University with an MSc in Financial Economics and an MSc in Economics for Development.
Joyce was also recognized as Forbes 30 under 30 (2014) and Wharton 40 under 40 (2015). She speaks Mandarin and Spanish fluently. As hobbies, she volunteers with Givology (www.givology.org) - a 100% volunteer-driven non-profit she co-founded in 2008, enjoys reading, and plays ice hockey.
FACT Capital
Markus Bihler is co-founder of Builders Union. Prior to Builders Union, Markus was founding CEO of HappyFresh Group which he built into Southeast Asia's leading grocery delivery and consumer analytics platform, and venture partner at Temasek / Vertex, one of the lead investors in HappyFresh. He joined HappyFresh from automotive e-commerce retailer Tirendo (Germany), where he served as CEO and led its strategic sale to SDAX-listed Delticom. Markus started his career as a generalist private equity investor with The Blackstone Group (London) and EQT Partners (Munich/Warsaw). Markus graduated from the University of Oxford, Balliol College.
Builders Union
Nick is a founding Partner and the Chief Investment Officer of Munro Partners.
Nick is responsible for the investment management of Munro’s key investment funds and the formulation and implementation of the proprietary investment process.
Nick has over 20 years experience working in financial services and has been managing global long / short equity mandates for over 15 years.
Nick was Head of International Strategy on the K2 Select International Absolute Return Fund 2005‐2015, a Member of the K2 Asset Management asset allocation and currency exposure committee, Senior Analyst (Global Oil and Gas) at Deutsche Bank UK 2000‐2005 and Manager Australian Equities for Commonwealth Financial Services 1996‐1999.
Nick holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) degree from the University of Melbourne, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment and a Registered Representative of the Sydney Futures Exchange.
Munro Partners
Yen Liow is the Managing Partner at Aravt Global LLC. Mr. Liow directs the firm’s research process and actively researches many of the investments in the portfolio. Mr. Liow was previously a Principal of Ziff Brothers Investments (“ZBI”) and a Managing Director at ZBI Equities, ZBI’s equity market-neutral fund in New York. Mr. Liow joined ZBI in 2001 and ran a team that oversaw ZBI Equities’ investments in the media, telecom, energy and agriculture sectors. Prior to ZBI, Mr. Liow was a Consultant at Bain & Company in its San Francisco, Sydney, Singapore and Beijing offices.
Mr. Liow earned a Bachelor of Laws (Hons.) and Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne in 1994 and a Masters of Business Administration (George F. Baker Scholar) from Harvard Business School in 2001. Mr. Liow lives in Manhattan, New York with his wife and two children.
Aravt Global
Prof. Samuel Harvey is a leading academic psychiatrist with international standing in clinical and population mental health research. He is committed to addressing the human cost of mental illness and suicide and has a passionate determination to create positive change on a global scale. Originally from Adelaide, Sam initially trained and worked as a GP, before pursuing his passion for mental health and training as a psychiatrist at the internationally renowned Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience in London. He completed his PhD at the University of London in 2011, and in the decade since has continued to practice as both a clinical psychiatrist and researcher.
Since returning to Australia in 2012, Sam has established new programs of research focused on workplace mental health, models of care for depression, and the overlap between physical and mental health. His research is internationally recognised, with agencies such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) looking to him for advice on how to create more mentally healthy workplaces.
Most recently, he led the development, delivery, and evaluation of mental health services for Emergency Service workers who responded to the 2019/2020 Black Summer Bush Fires (the Bush Fire Support Service).
Sam commenced in the role of Executive Director and Chief Scientist with the Institute on 1 November 2021.
Black Dog Institute
Dr Stewart read the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge (Girton College), obtaining his BA in 2007 and MA in 2009. Following this, he moved to Sydney to work as a research assistant at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute to gain more extensive research experience. He subsequently embarked on a PhD at the University of New South Wales, graduating in 2012. Since then he has built his own research team to tackle important biological questions and his research has provided novel insights into the function of molecules important to disease.
Dr Stewart’s research is dedicated to explaining the fundamental mechanisms that govern essential biological processes involved in disease, such as energy conversion and protein folding. His team uses a combination of experimental methods, such as X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy and intact mass spectrometry. Only by seeing the machinery of life at the atomic scale can we begin to understand life and disease.
Dr Stewart has received many prestigious awards for his research and science communication.
Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute
William Ackman is the CEO and Portfolio Manager of Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P., an SEC registered investment adviser founded in 2003. Pershing Square is a concentrated research-intensive fundamental value investor in long and occasionally short investments in the public markets.
Prior to forming Pershing Square, Mr. Ackman co-founded Gotham Partners Management Co., LLC, an investment adviser that managed public and private equity hedge fund portfolios. Prior to Gotham Partners, Mr. Ackman began his career in real estate investment banking at Ackman Brothers & Singer, Inc. Mr. Ackman received an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Harvard College.
Mr. Ackman is the Chairman of the board of The Howard Hughes Corporation (NYSE: HHC). He is also a member of the Investors Advisory Committee on Financial Markets for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a member of the Board of Trustees at The Rockefeller University and a member of the Board of Dean’s Advisors of the Harvard Business School.
In 2006, Mr. Ackman co-founded the Pershing Square Foundation to support exceptional leaders and innovative organizations that tackle important social issues and deliver scalable and sustainable impact across the globe.
Pershing Square Capital Management (USA)
Scott teaches brand strategy and digital marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business.
He was named “One of the World’s 50 Best Business School Professors” by Poets & Quants in 2012.
A serial entrepreneur, he founded 9 companies, including Red Envelope, Prophet, and L2 Inc., acquired by Gartner (NYSE: IT) in 2017. Scott’s book The Four (Portfolio Penguin, 2017) debuted on the New York Times hardcover non-fiction list. His second book, The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning was published in 2019.
Scott was elected to the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders of Tomorrow and has served on the boards of directors of Eddie Bauer (Nasdaq: EBHI), The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), Urban Outfitters (Nasdaq: URBN), and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
He writes a weekly newsletter, No Mercy / No Malice, and hosts the podcasts The Prof G Show and Pivot (with Kara Swisher).
NYU Stern School of Business and Section4
Cathie founded ARK Invest in January 2014. Focused solely on disruptive innovation, ARK aims to identify large-scale investment opportunities in the public markets resulting from technological innovations centered around genome sequencing, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy storage, and blockchain technology.
Prior to ARK, Cathie spent twelve years at AllianceBernstein as Chief Investment Officer of Global Thematic Strategies where she managed over $5 billion. Cathie joined Alliance Capital from Tupelo Capital Management, a hedge fund she co-founded which, in 2000, managed $800 million in global thematic strategies. Prior to her tenure at Tupelo Capital, she worked for 18 years with Jennison Associates as Chief Economist, Equity Research Analyst, Portfolio Manager and Director. She started her career in Los Angeles, California at The Capital Group as an Assistant Economist. Cathie received her Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, in Finance and Economics from the University of Southern California in 1981.
In 2018, editors at Bloomberg acknowledged Cathie by selecting her to its second annual Bloomberg 50 list of people across business, entertainment, finance, politics, technology, and science who have defined global business. Additionally, Fortune named Cathie to its exclusive roundtable of experts in the annual Fortune Investors Guide: The Best Investing Advice for 2019 From Fortune’s Experts. In 2016, Cathie received the “Women in Finance – Outstanding Contribution Award” from Market Media, and she was a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum (China) in 2016 & 2017, and the World Strategic Forum (Miami) in 2017.
ARK Invest (USA)
Shane Finemore is the Managing Partner of Manikay Partners and serves as the firm’s Chief Investment Officer. Prior to founding Manikay Partners, Mr. Finemore spent seventeen years at UBS and predecessor firms. Mr. Finemore was Managing Director and Head of the UBS Fundamental Investment Group, UBS’s Proprietary Multi Strategy Arbitrage and Investment business in the Americas, from 2002 to 2007, and served on the UBS Investment Bank board from 2006. Mr. Finemore was Head of Australian Equities at UBS from 1999 to 2001. Mr. Finemore began his career with a predecessor of UBS in Interest Rate and Equity derivatives in 1990.
He was a member of the board of the Australian Securities Exchange Limited from 2007-2013. Mr. Finemore graduated from the University of New South Wales with a Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting and Finance) with distinction in 1989. Mr. Finemore is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.
Manikay Partners (USA)
Mr Luciano has over twenty five years’ experience gained as a portfolio manager, equities analyst and accountant. Prior to founding VGI Partners in 2008, Mr Luciano spent five years as an Executive Director and Investment Manager with Caledonia Investments in Sydney. Prior to Caledonia, Mr Luciano held positions as a Portfolio Manager at Allianz Equity Management and an equities analyst at BNP Paribas (formerly Prudential-Bache Securities Australia). Mr Luciano commenced his career as an accountant with BDO Nelson Parkhill in 1993.
Mr Luciano graduated from the University of New South Wales, with a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Accounting & Finance where he later completed a Masters of Commerce, majoring in Advanced Finance. He is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. Mr Luciano has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program and has been awarded the CFA Charter. Mr Luciano is a Director of VGI Partners Global Investments Limited (ASX:VG1) and VGI Partners Asian Investments Limited (ASX:VG8).
VGI Partners
Prior to founding Tekne, Beeneet Kothari was a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at PointState Capital, a multi-billion dollar global macro investment firm.
Before joining PointState at launch in January 2011, Mr. Kothari was a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at Duquesne Capital Management, a thirty-year old investment firm founded by Stanley F. Druckenmiller. At Duquesne, Mr. Kothari managed a global technology, media and telecom portfolio and helped manage the fund’s overall technology exposure. He joined Duquesne as an analyst in September 2005 and became Managing Director four years later in 2009.
Prior to joining Duquesne, Mr. Kothari worked at Morgan Stanley as an investment banking analyst after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004.
He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s joint-degree program in Management and Technology with dual degrees from Wharton and Engineering, and also earned a Master’s in Biotechnology, in four years. He graduated with honors including the prestigious Dean’s Award for excellence from Wharton, awarded to the top student in each graduating class. Mr. Kothari lives in New York City with his wife and two children.
Tekne Capital Management (USA)
Qiao Ma joined CI in July 2017. Prior to this, she spent seven years investing in the technology and consumers sectors in Asia and the US. Most recently she was the Head of Asia for Jericho Capital, a multi-billion dollar global investment fund based in New York. Qiao has also previously worked at Coatue Management, a New York based investment fund specializing in global technology and consumer sectors and a spinoff of Tiger Management. From 2006 to 2008 Qiao worked in the Financial Institutions Group in the Investment Banking Division of Lehman Brothers.
Qiao is a proud graduate of University of Virginia (B.Sc in Commerce). She also has an MBA from Harvard Business School. Qiao is a native speaker of Mandarin, Cantonese and English. B.Sc, MBA
Cooper Investors
Todd Guyot is a Portfolio Manager for the Regal Australian Small Companies Fund. Prior to joining Regal in November 2014, Todd was Head of Growth and Small Companies at Moelis Australia, where he was recognised by the Wall Street Journal as Asia’s Best Technology Analyst in 2013. A specialist small companies investor with over 22 years’ experience, Todd was Head of Small Companies and Growth at BNP Paribas prior to Moelis and Head of Small Company research at Burdett, Buckeridge & Young prior to that.
Todd holds a Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance & Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia and has completed an Associate Course majoring in Accounting at the Australian Society of Accountants in Sydney. Todd also holds a Bachelor of Economics from Macquarie University.
Regal Funds Management
David joined Paradice as a Portfolio Manager/Analyst in 2012. David has considerable experience across all sectors and market caps within the Australian equity market. Prior to joining Paradice, he was a senior analyst covering small and mid cap companies in Macquarie Equities research team.
David has over 17 years’ industry experience and holds a Bachelor of Commerce with majors in Economics and Finance.
Paradice Investment Management
At his core, Hamish loves helping people create futures they never thought possible. As a coach, mentor, and co-founder of TDM Growth Partners, he brings a multitude of experience from top-tier investment firms as well as from his hiatus as a school guidance counsellor. Hamish’s innate leadership skills, broad life experiences, and full-throttle approach to life have been a driving force to the TDM culture of success. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Somnomed (ASX:SOM) and Tyro Payments (ASX: TYR) and has significant experience in investing in fast-growing software and FinTech businesses.
TDM Growth Partners is an global investment firm, investing in fast growing companies run by passionate management teams. TDM’s unique and flexible mandate allows investment in public and private companies, with a highly focused approach of no more than 15 businesses globally.
TDM Growth Partners
Jun Bei Liu is the Portfolio Manager of the Tribeca Alpha Plus Fund, one of Australia's longest running equity long short funds. Jun Bei Liu is a passionate investor with over 18 years of Investment experience covering a large range of sectors, an effective public speaker about her investment views and a regular participant in prestigious conferences such as Sohn. The last 14 years of Jun Bei’s career has been with Tribeca and prior to Tribeca, Jun Bei spent four years as an investment analyst covering the Australian consumer sectors at Morningstar and Foster Stockbroking.
Jun Bei is a native Chinese speaker and regularly travels to China and visits other Asian markets as part of her Investment Research, and she actively insights the companies that she invests in. Jun Bei is also a CFA charter holder and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Tribeca Investment Partners
Josh Resnick is the founder and managing partner of Jericho Capital, a hedge fund focused on investing in the global technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sectors.
Prior to founding Jericho Capital, Josh was a key principal at TCS Capital, a global TMT hedge fund that he joined shortly after its launch in 2001. Prior to TCS Capital, he was a Managing Director at KPE Ventures, a media, entertainment and technology venture capital fund based in New York. Prior to KPE Ventures, he was a member of the business development group at Fox Entertainment Group in Los Angeles. Josh began his career as an analyst in the media and entertainment investment banking group at Bear Stearns.
Josh graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in Economics from Emory University. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Child Mind Institute in New York City.
Jericho Capital Asset Management (USA)
Babak Poushanchi is a Founder and Managing Partner of Cota Capital, an investment firm based in San Francisco, focused on the technology sector.
Babak has spent the majority of his career investing in private and public companies. Prior to founding Cota, Babak was a Co-Founder and Co-Portfolio Manager of Newbrook Capital, a US$1+ billion global long/short equity fund based in New York City. Previously, Babak was an Investment Analyst at Karsch Capital, a US$2+ billion global long/short equity fund based in New York City. He was also a Venture Partner at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, an early stage technology accelerator with over 70 portfolio companies, and an Investment Associate at Indosuez Capital, a US$3+ billion merchant banking fund, investing in private companies across the capital structure.
Babak holds a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University.
Cota Capital (USA)
William joined Milford in 2010 and has been working from Milford’s Sydney office since its establishment in 2014.
William is the Portfolio Manager of the Australian Absolute Growth Funds and the Milford Dynamic Funds. He visits and speaks to hundreds of companies every year and conducts detailed financial analysis to uncover high quality investment ideas.
William has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Auckland majoring in Finance and Economics, and is a CFA Charterholder.
Milford Asset Management
Gavin Baker is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Atreides Management, LP. Prior to founding Atreides in 2019, Gavin was at Fidelity Investments from 1999 – 2017, most recently as the portfolio manager of the Fidelity OTC Fund from 2009 – 2017. The $17 billion Fidelity OTC Fund outperformed 100% of its Morningstar peers and won 6 Lipper awards over Gavin’s 8-year tenure as portfolio manager.
Gavin was the Boston Globe’s Fund Manager of the Year in 2014 and his performance was recognized by articles in Barron’s, the New York Times, Investors Business Daily and the Wall Street Journal. He helped spearhead Fidelity’s venture capital investing and was a board observer at Nutanix, 23andME, Jet.com, AppNexus, Dataminr and Roku, among others. Gavin earned an AB in economics and history from Dartmouth College.
Atreides Management (USA)
David Halpert is the founder, portfolio manager, and CIO of Prince Street Capital, an emerging and frontier market asset manager based in New York and Singapore. David coined the term ‘Digital Decolonization’ – a new paradigm for assessing investments in emerging and frontier markets through the lens of innovation.
He has 30 years of experience researching and investing in the developing world. Prior to founding Prince Street in 2001, David managed an EM portfolio at Zesiger Capital Group and worked in Indonesia as an equity research analyst.
David has appeared on Bloomberg, CNBC and CNN, and presented at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He has lectured at universities including NYU, Cornell Tech, Arizona State, Nanyang Technical University and Singapore University of Social Science.
David earned a BA (magna cum laude) in Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Prince Street Capital (SG)
Nick is a founding Partner and the Chief Investment Officer of Munro Partners.
Nick is responsible for the investment management of Munro’s key investment funds and the formulation and implementation of the proprietary investment process.
Nick has been managing global long / short equity mandates for over 12 years.
Key career highlights include:
Nick holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) degree from the University of Melbourne, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance.
Munro Partners
Associate Professor Jill Newby is MRFF Career Development Fellow and Clinical Psychologist at the Black Dog Institute and UNSW. Jill is a leading expert on the technology-based treatment of depression, anxiety and chronic health conditions in adults, and leads a program of research into e-mental health, smartphone apps, and virtual reality interventions.
Her research aims to improve the lives of people living with depression and anxiety and those at risk, through developing new and improved treatments, focusing on holistic approaches to mental health care, and improving access to affordable, effective treatment.
Black Dog Institute
Commencing his career as a chartered accountant, Chris Cuffe entered the funds management industry in 1985. In 1988 he joined Colonial First State where he was CEO from 1990 until 2003. In 2003 he became CEO of the listed Challenger Group.
Chris is now involved in a portfolio of activities in the investment and non-profit sectors which include:
- member of the Investment Committee of UniSuper, which provides superannuation services to employees of Australia's higher education and research sector;
- chairman of Australian Philanthropic Services and Atrium Investment Management;
- director of various listed companies including Global Value Fund, Antipodes Global Investment Company, Argo Investments and Class; and
- founder, directors and manager of Third Link Growth Fund.
Chris was previously a non-executive director of UniSuper from 2007 to 2017, of which the last six years was as Chairman.
In October 2007 Chris was inducted into the Australian Fund Manager’s RBS Hall of Fame for services to the investment industry. In 2017 he was appointed as an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia.
Chris holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of New South Wales and a Diploma from the Securities Institute of Australia. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Accountants in Australia and New Zealand, a Fellow of the Institute of Company Directors and an Associate of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia.
Hearts and Minds Investments Ltd (HM1)
Professor Jason Kovacic was appointed the new Executive Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, commencing in March 2020. Professor Kovacic graduated from The University of Melbourne Medical School in 1994 and trained as a cardiologist at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. He completed a PhD in cardiovascular medicine at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute before he moved to New York to become Professor of Medicine and Acting Director at Mount Sinai Cardiovascular Research Centre in 2007.
In parallel with his vital ongoing research to define new ways to prevent and treat heart attacks, Professor Kovacic is a practicing clinical cardiologist, specializing in vascular disease and blockages of the heart arteries.
In addition to his many achievements in medicine and in biomedical research, Professor Kovacic was an elite athlete, having been a world-class rower. He also plays classical guitar and speaks several languages.
Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute
Ray Dalio is the Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Bridgewater Associates. Ray started Bridgewater out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York in 1975 and under his leadership, the firm has grown into the largest and most successful hedge fund in the world and fifth most important private company in the U.S., according to Fortune Magazine.
As a result of Ray’s innovative approach to global macroeconomic investing and policymaking, Ray has been called the “Steve Jobs of Investing” by aiCIO and Wired magazines and was named one of the 100 Most Influential People by TIME Magazine.
Ray holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from C.W. Post College and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School.
He has been married to his wife, Barbara, for over 40 years and has four grown sons. He is an active philanthropist with a special interest in ocean exploration, microfinance and equal educational opportunities for underprivileged youth.
Bridgewater Associates (USA)
Since the formation of Oaktree in 1995, Mr. Marks has been responsible for ensuring the firm’s adherence to its core investment philosophy; communicating closely with clients concerning products and strategies; and contributing his experience to big-picture decisions relating to investments and corporate direction. From 1985 until 1995, Mr. Marks led the groups at The TCW Group, Inc. that were responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. He was also Chief Investment Officer for Domestic Fixed Income at TCW.
Previously, Mr. Marks was with Citicorp Investment Management for 16 years, where from 1978 to 1985 he was Vice President and senior portfolio manager in charge of convertible and high yield securities. Between 1969 and 1978, he was an equity research analyst and, subsequently, Citicorp’s Director of Research.
Mr. Marks holds a B.S.Ec. degree cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a major in finance and an M.B.A. in accounting and marketing from the Booth School of Business of the University of Chicago, where he received the George Hay Brown Prize. He is a CFA charterholder.
Mr. Marks is a member of the Investment Committees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Edmond J. Safra Foundation; a Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum; Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Drawing School; and an Emeritus Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania (where from 2000 to 2010 he chaired the Investment Board).
Oaktree Capital Management (USA)
Rob Kapito is President and a Director of BlackRock, a member of BlackRock’s Global Executive Committee and Chairman of the Global Operating Committee. He is responsible for day-to-day oversight of all BlackRock’s key operating units including Investment Strategies, Client Businesses, Technology & Operations, and Risk & Quantitative Analysis. Mr. Kapito is also a Director of iShares Inc.
Prior to assuming his current responsibilities in 2007, Mr. Kapito served as Head of BlackRock’s Portfolio Management Group. In this role, he was responsible for overseeing all portfolio management within BlackRock, including the Fixed Income, Equity, Liquidity, and Alternative Investment Groups. Prior to founding BlackRock in 1988, Mr. Kapito was a Vice President in the Mortgage Products Group at The First Boston Corporation.
Mr. Kapito serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania and the Harvard Business School Board of Dean’s Advisors. He is also President of the Board of Directors for the Hope & Heroes Children’s Cancer Fund. Mr. Kapito is the recipient of the 2009 Joseph Wharton Leadership Award, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation’s 2010 Semper Fidelis Award and is a frequent public speaker on best practices in investment management.
Mr. Kapito earned a BS degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1983.
BlackRock (USA)
Jun Bei Liu is the Portfolio Manager of the Tribeca Alpha Plus Fund, one of Australia's longest running equity long short funds. Jun Bei Liu is a passionate investor with over 18 years of Investment experience covering a large range of sectors, an effective public speaker about her investment views and a regular participant in prestigious conferences such as Sohn. The last 14 years of Jun Bei’s career has been with Tribeca and prior to Tribeca, Jun Bei spent four years as an investment analyst covering the Australian consumer sectors at Morningstar and Foster Stockbroking.
Jun Bei is a native Chinese speaker and regularly travels to China and visits other Asian markets as part of her Investment Research, and she actively insights the companies that she invests in. Jun Bei is also a CFA charter holder and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Tribeca Investment Partners
Matt Comyn is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
Matt has 20 years’ experience in banking across business, institutional, retail and wealth management and has held a number of senior leadership roles since joining CBA in 1999, including Group Executive Retail Banking Services and Managing Director of CommSec.
Since becoming CEO in 2018, Matt has been focused on building a simpler bank fully aligned to meeting the needs of customers in core markets, underpinned by stronger risk management and a continuing commitment to innovation and customer service.
Matt holds an Executive MBA from Sydney University, a Master’s degree in Commerce and a Bachelor’s degree in Aviation, both from the University of New South Wales. He has completed the General Management Program at Harvard Business School and is also a director of Unicef Australia.
He is married with three children and lives in Sydney.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Markus Bihler is Co-Founder of Builders Union, a London-based independent asset manager focussed on global public equities in the consumer sector.
Prior, Markus was a venture partner at Vertex in Singapore, and served as CEO of HappyFresh Group in Asia and Tirendo in Europe.
He started his career as a private equity investor with The Blackstone Group and EQT Partners.
Markus is a graduate of the University of Oxford and an Endeavor Entrepreneur.
Builders Union (UK)
At his core, Hamish loves helping people create futures they never thought possible. As a coach, mentor, and co-founder of TDM Growth Partners, he brings a multitude of experience from top-tier investment firms as well as from his hiatus as a school guidance counsellor. Hamish’s innate leadership skills, broad life experiences, and full-throttle approach to life have been a driving force to the TDM culture of success. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Somnomed (ASX:SOM) and Tyro Payments (ASX: TYR) and has significant experience in investing in fast-growing software and FinTech businesses.
TDM Growth Partners is an global investment firm, investing in fast growing companies run by passionate management teams. TDM’s unique and flexible mandate allows investment in public and private companies, with a highly focused approach of no more than 15 businesses globally.
TDM Growth Partners
Hamish Douglass is Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Magellan, and Lead Portfolio Manager of Magellan’s Global Equity strategies. Hamish is a former member of the Australian government’s Financial Literacy Board, the Australian government’s Takeovers Panel, the Australian government’s Foreign Investment Review Board and the Forum of Young Global Leaders – World Economic Forum. Hamish is a Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
Magellan
Emma is a portfolio manager for the Airlie Australian Share Fund at Airlie Funds Management, a value focused Australian equities manager. Prior to joining Airlie, Emma worked in Fidelity International’s Australian investment team in Sydney for a number of years. She commenced her career at Nomura Securities as an equity research analyst, and holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Liberal Studies) from the University of Sydney.
Airlie Funds Management
Christopher joined Montaka in January 2015 after spending more than four years at LFG, the private investment group of the Lowy family, where he was a senior member of the research team based in New York. Prior to this Christopher worked at One East Partners, a hedge fund based in New York, and as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in Sydney.
Christopher holds a Bachelor of Commerce with Distinction, majoring in Actuarial Studies and Finance, from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, under the Co-Op scholarship program.
Montaka Global Investments
Allan joined Cooper Investors in 2007 and has over 12 years of experience investing in international equities markets.
Having been a foundation member of the Cooper Investors global equities team, Allan has been instrumental in refining and implementing the VOF investment philosophy and the CI Way in global equities markets. This has enabled the team to deliver consistent performance and to build the global equities platform to over $2bn in assets under management.
Allan was appointed Portfolio Manager in 2011 and today specialises in North American markets.
Cooper Investors
Nick is a founding Partner and the Chief Investment Officer of Munro Partners.
Nick is responsible for the investment management of Munro’s key investment funds and the formulation and implementation of the proprietary investment process.
Nick has been managing global long / short equity mandates for over 12 years.
Key career highlights include:
Nick holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) degree from the University of Melbourne, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance.
Munro Partners
Seth H. Fischer is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Oasis Management, an international investment manager headquartered in Hong Kong that invests globally across capital structures. Mr. Fischer founded Oasis in 2002 following a successful seven-year career at Highbridge Capital Management, where he managed the firm’s Asian investment portfolio.
A proponent of corporate governance reforms across Asia, he is a frequent speaker on economic and investment panels. Oasis is a signatory to Stewardship Codes in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong, and a Sustaining Donor to the Board Director Training Institute of Japan, as well as a member of the Japan Corporate Governance Network and the Asia Corporate Governance Association.
Prior to joining Highbridge, Mr. Fischer served in the Israel Defense Forces. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Yeshiva University in 1993. He is a Board Member of the Karen Leung Foundation and the Carmel School in Hong Kong, and Vice Chairman of the Ohel Leah Synagogue Management Committee in Hong Kong.
Oasis Management (HK)
Beeneet Kothari is the Managing Partner and Principal Portfolio Manager of Tekne. Prior to founding Tekne, Mr. Kothari was a managing director and portfolio manager at PointState Capital, a multi-billion dollar global macro investment firm.
Prior to founding Tekne, Mr. Kothari was a managing director and portfolio manager at PointState Capital, a multi-billion dollar global macro investment firm.
Before joining PointState at launch in January 2011, Mr. Kothari was a managing director and portfolio manager at Duquesne Capital Management, a thirty-year old investment firm founded by Stanley F. Druckenmiller. At Duquesne, Mr. Kothari managed a global technology, media and telecom portfolio and helped manage the fund’s overall technology exposure. He joined Duquesne as an analyst in September 2005 and became managing director four years later in 2009. Prior to joining Duquesne, Mr. Kothari worked at Morgan Stanley as an investment banking analyst after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004.
He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s joint-degree program in Management and Technology with dual degrees from Wharton and Engineering, and also earned a Master’s in Biotechnology, in four years. He graduated with honors including the prestigious Dean’s Award for excellence from Wharton, awarded to the top student in each graduating class.
Tekne Capital Management (USA)
Philip King is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Regal Funds Management. Phil started Regal alongside his brother in 2004, since then Regal has become one of Australia’s most awarded investment managers, named Australian Hedge Fund of the Year four times.
Recently inducted in to the Australian Fund Managers Hall of Fame, Phil has been recognised as one of Australia’s “most astute readers of the share market” and “shrewdest fund managers”. A reflection of the wealth he has generated for investors over 15 years – $100,000 invested in Regal’s Atlantic Absolute Return Fund in 2004 would be worth over $11million today.
Prior to launching Regal, Phil was a portfolio manager at a London based hedge fund, De Putron Funds Management, for six years. Before that he spent five years with Macquarie Bank as a sell side analyst. Phil also worked with KPMG as a Chartered Accountant for eight years.
Phil holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from the University of New South Wales, is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia and a Chartered Accountant.
Regal Funds Management
Steven Krein is the CEO, co-founder and managing partner of StartUp Health, which is investing in a global army of entrepreneurs, called Health Transformers, committed to achieving health moonshots. StartUp Health has the world’s largest health innovation portfolio with more than 290 companies from 24 countries and six continents. In addition, StartUp Health has assembled a curated worldwide network of 200,000 innovators, industry leaders and investors committed to supporting the entrepreneurs reinventing the future of health.
Steven is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, investor, advisor and entrepreneurial coach. Prior to StartUp Health, Steven co-founded and led several technology companies including OrganizedWisdom, Promotions.com and Webstakes, a company he took public on Nasdaq in 1999. Steven received his JD degree from Delaware Law School and BA degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. Steven is a member of YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) and lives in New York City with his wife and three daughters.
StartUp Health (USA)
Andrew Macken founded Montaka Global Investments in Sydney in 2014 after spending nearly four years as a senior member of the research team at Kynikos Associates in New York. Montaka Global Investments has grown to $600 million with offices in Sydney and New York; and manages the Montaka global equity long/short funds and the Montgomery Global long-only funds.
During his time at Kynikos, Andrew developed particular expertise in short portfolio management that represents an important part of Montaka’s investment approach and has become increasingly valuable in today’s global equity market environment. He began his career as a management consultant advising corporates based in Australia and abroad.
Andrew holds a Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School in New York. While at Columbia, Andrew was a member of the Applied Value Investing program through the prestigious Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing. Andrew graduated with a Master of Commerce, focusing on Finance; and First Class Honours with a Bachelor of Engineering under a Co-Op Scholarship from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
Montaka Global Investments
Mark Nelson is Chairman and Co-founder of Caledonia, a specialist global investment manager founded in 1992 and based in Sydney, Australia. Mark was educated at the Universities of Melbourne, and Cambridge, receiving his Doctorate in 1986.
Dr Nelson has over 30 years experience working in Australian and International investment and equity markets, analysing and assessing the business models of global companies in a wide variety of industries, and successfully placing Caledonia at the forefront of Australian-based equity investment firms.
He is currently Chairman of Art Exhibitions Australia, and a Director of Kaldor Public Art Projects. He is also a governor of the Florey Institute of Neuroscience, a Director of the MindGardens Neuroscience Alliance, and a Director of Telix Pharmaceuticals. He serves on the International Council of the Tate Museums in London, and the Directors Council of The Getty Museum in Los Angeles and a Trustee of The Sydney Swans Foundation, and a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation.
Caledonia
David Paradice founded Paradice Investment Management in 1999. Paradice Investment Management invests in equities around the world with offices in Australia and the USA. It is a privately owned company with a team of 43 people, with approximately $16.5 billion funds under management.
David currently sits on the board of The Future Generation Investment Fund a LIC that donates their management fees back to children’s charities. He supports a number of charities across a number of fields including humanitarian, the arts, environmental, and education. He is Chairman of the Taronga Zoo Conservation Society because of its environmental work especially in the oceans. He was also assisted in setting the Clean Energy Finance corporation. In 2017 he was awarded an AO for distinguished service to the community through philanthropic contributions and charitable support, and to business and commerce in the field of investment management.
Paradice Investment Management
Babak Poushanchi is a Founder and Managing Partner of Cota Capital, an investment firm based in San Francisco, focused on the technology sector.
Babak has spent the majority of his career investing in private and public companies. Prior to Cota, he was a Co-Founder and Co-Portfolio Manager of Newbrook Capital, a global long/short equity fund based in New York City, and a Venture Partner at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, an early stage technology accelerator, in New York City.
Babak spent the early part of his career on the investment teams at Karsch Capital, a global long-short equity fund based in New York City, and at Indosuez Capital, a merchant banking fund based in New York City focused on private investments across the capital structure.
Babak holds a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University.
Cota Capital (USA)
Cathie founded ARK Invest in January 2014. Focused solely on disruptive innovation, ARK aims to identify large-scale investment opportunities in the public markets resulting from technological innovations centered around genome sequencing, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy storage, and blockchain technology.
Prior to ARK, Cathie spent twelve years at AllianceBernstein as Chief Investment Officer of Global Thematic Strategies where she managed over $5 billion. Cathie joined Alliance Capital from Tupelo Capital Management, a hedge fund she co-founded which, in 2000, managed $800 million in global thematic strategies. Prior to her tenure at Tupelo Capital, she worked for 18 years with Jennison Associates as Chief Economist, Equity Research Analyst, Portfolio Manager and Director. She started her career in Los Angeles, California at The Capital Group as an Assistant Economist. Cathie received her Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, in Finance and Economics from the University of Southern California in 1981.
In 2018, editors at Bloomberg acknowledged Cathie by selecting her to its second annual Bloomberg 50 list of people across business, entertainment, finance, politics, technology, and science who have defined global business. Additionally, Fortune named Cathie to its exclusive roundtable of experts in the annual Fortune Investors Guide: The Best Investing Advice for 2019 From Fortune’s Experts. In 2016, Cathie received the “Women in Finance – Outstanding Contribution Award” from Market Media, and she was a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum (China) in 2016 & 2017, and the World Strategic Forum (Miami) in 2017.
ARK Invest (USA)
Adam Spencer was completing a PhD in Pure Mathematics when he happened to win the national Triple J Raw Comedy championship in 1996. From there, a television and radio career beckoned and Adam completed 15 years as one of Australia’s most respected, wittiest and thought provoking breakfast radio commentators across Triple J and later ABC 702.
Adam explained his love of prime numbers and the magic of maths to an enraptured TED audience in early 2013 and since being posted online, his talk has had over two million views.
Adam is the ambassador for many charities including Redkite and in 2014 was appointed University of Sydney’s Ambassador for Maths and Science. Adam’s latest books include The Little Book of Numbers, The Big Book of Numbers, World of Numbers, Time Machine, The Number Games and The Top 100 available from www.adamspencer.com.au
Josh Frydenberg was elected to the Australian Parliament in 2010 as the Member for Kooyong. He is the seventh person since Federation to hold this seat.
In August 2018, he was appointed Treasurer of Australia and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, having previously served as Minister for the Environment and Energy, Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia, Assistant Treasurer and Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister since the 2013 election.
As a primary school student Josh attended Bialik College in Hawthorn and then completed his secondary schooling at Mt Scopus College in Burwood.
Josh has Law and Economics degrees both with Honours from Monash University and completed his articles of clerkship at Mallesons Stephen Jacques.
He went on to graduate with a Masters in International Relations from Oxford University which he attended on a Commonwealth Scholarship and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Josh was a Senior Adviser to Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Prime Minister John Howard and was a Director of Global Banking at Deutsche Bank AG.
Josh is a keen tennis player having represented Australia at the World University Games in England in 1991 and the United States in 1993.
He currently sits on the Board of the Kids Tennis Foundation which provides coaching to disadvantaged kids.
Treasurer of Australia
Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioural Economics at Duke University. He is dedicated to answering questions to help people live more sensible – if not rational – lives. His interests span a wide range of behaviours, and his sometimes unusual experiments are consistently interesting, amusing and informative, demonstrating profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom.
He is a founding member of the Centre for Advanced Hindsight, co-creator of the film documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies, and a three-time New York Times bestselling author. His books include Predictably Irrational, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, Irrationally Yours, Payoff and Dollars and Sense.
Duke University (USA)
Scott Bessent serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer for Key Square Capital Management, a New York-based investment partnership that he founded in 2015. Mr. Bessent was Chief Investment Officer for Soros Fund Management (SFM), the investment vehicle for the Soros Family and their foundations, from 2011 to 2015. He has been a well-known investor in the macro space for more than two decades.
From 1991 to 2000, Mr. Bessent was managing partner of SFM’s London office, including the period of the British Pound devaluation. He was previously associated with Brown Brothers Harriman, The Olayan Group, Kynikos Associates and Protégé Partners.
From 2006 to 2010, Mr. Bessent was an adjunct professor at Yale University, where he taught economic history. He is profiled in the book on macro investors, Inside the House of Money, and features prominently in Sebastian Mallaby’s history of hedge funds, More Money than God. He is a frequent speaker on economic and investment panels.
In 2017, Mr. Bessent published two articles in The International Economy magazine: one on the suppressing effects of low real interest rates on volatility, and one discussing whether other countries are at risk for “Japan Disease.”
Mr. Bessent resides in Manhattan with his spouse and two children. He is a trustee of Rockefeller University where he chairs the investment committee and is a member of the executive committee, the Yale University Council and Classical American Homes Preservation Trust. Mr. Bessent is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a B.A. degree from Yale University.
Key Square Capital Management (USA)
Raymond McCauley is a scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur working at the forefront of biotechnology. Raymond explores how applying technology to life — biology, genetics, medicine, agriculture, manufacturing — is affecting every one of us. He uses storytelling and down-to-earth examples to show how quickly these changes are happening, right now, and where it may head tomorrow. His work and profile have been featured in Wired, Forbes, Time, CNBC, Science, and Nature.
Raymond is: Founding Faculty and Chair of Digital Biology at Singularity University (http://singularityu.org/); Co-founder and Chief Architect for BioCurious (http://biocurious.org/); part of the team that developed next generation DNA sequencing at Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN, www.illumina.com), with past positions at Ingenuity Systems, Genome rates, NASA, and other agencies. Raymond creates, advises, and develops biotech-related startups.
BioCurious; Singularity Uni (USA)
Mike Milken has been at the forefront of successful initiatives in medical research, public health, education, and access to capital for more than four decades. Starting as a financier in 1969, he revolutionized modern capital markets by pricing and rewarding risk more efficiently. The thousands of companies he financed created millions of jobs, and a Washington Post article said Milken “helped create the conditions for America’s explosion of wealth and creativity” in the late 20th century.
In 1982 he formalized his previous philanthropy by co-founding the Milken Family Foundation. Fortune magazine called him “The Man Who Changed Medicine” and Forbes listed him among “Visionaries Reimagining Our Children’s Future.” He is chairman of the Milken Institute, which hosts more than 250 events each year including major conferences in Singapore, London, the Middle East, New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University was named to recognize an Institute gift. FasterCures, one of eight Milken Institute centers, speeds progress against all life-threatening diseases. The Center for Financial Markets promotes financial literacy, access to capital, stronger markets and innovative financial solutions.
A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, he earned his MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Lori, who are members of the Giving Pledge, have been married since 1968; they have three children and 10 grandchildren. More information is at www.mikemilken.com.
Milken Institute
Jun Bei Liu is the Portfolio Manager of the Tribeca Alpha Plus Fund, one of Australia's longest running equity long short funds. Jun Bei Liu is a passionate investor with over 18 years of Investment experience covering a large range of sectors, an effective public speaker about her investment views and a regular participant in prestigious conferences such as Sohn. The last 14 years of Jun Bei’s career has been with Tribeca and prior to Tribeca, Jun Bei spent four years as an investment analyst covering the Australian consumer sectors at Morningstar and Foster Stockbroking.
Jun Bei is a native Chinese speaker and regularly travels to China and visits other Asian markets as part of her Investment Research, and she actively insights the companies that she invests in. Jun Bei is also a CFA charter holder and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Jun Bei Liu
Tim Carleton is the Portfolio Manager at Auscap Asset Management, a value focused long short Australian equities manager based in Sydney. Tim has a proven track record in long short investing having co-founded Auscap and, prior to that, having managed a proprietary portfolio at Goldman Sachs. Tim is a CFA charterholder, a CMT charterholder, a Senior Associate of FINSIA, and has a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sydney.
Tim Carleton
Peter founded Cooper Investors in 2001. As Chief Investment Officer, Peter created and implemented the firm’s VoF investment philosophy which is applied across the international, domestic and Asian equities strategies. He is responsible for mentoring investment team members and the standardisation and integration of the process across the investment teams.
Peter has over 30 years of investment management experience. In 1987 he joined the NSW State Superannuation Investment and Management Corporation as a specialist industry analyst and progressed to deputy portfolio manager of the $7bn portfolio. In 1993, Peter ran the Australian equities portfolios for BNP and then joined Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (formerly Mercury Asset Management) where he worked for 7 years, culminating in his position as Head of Australian Equities and Managing Director where he oversaw a team managing $7.5bn in Australian equities.
Peter Cooper
Craig is a Portfolio Manager at Regal, specialising in health care across Australia and Asia. Prior to Regal, he was head of Health Care at Macquarie Securities Group, has worked at Boston Consulting Group in Sydney and New York, and practised medicine for five years in Australia and the UK.
Craig Collie
Christopher joined Montaka in January 2015 after spending more than four years at LFG, the private investment group of the Lowy family, where he was a senior member of the research team based in New York. Prior to this Christopher worked at One East Partners, a hedge fund based in New York, and as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in Sydney.
Christopher holds a Bachelor of Commerce with Distinction, majoring in Actuarial Studies and Finance, from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, under the Co-Op scholarship program.
Christopher Demasi
Emma is a portfolio manager for the Airlie Australian Share Fund at Airlie Funds Management, a value focused Australian equities manager. Prior to joining Airlie, Emma worked in Fidelity International’s Australian investment team in Sydney for a number of years. She commenced her career at Nomura Securities as an equity research analyst, and holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Liberal Studies) from the University of Sydney.
Emma Fisher
Steven is the Deputy Portfolio Manager and Analyst of the Pengana International Fund, the Pengana International Fund – Ethical, the Pengana International Fund – Ethical Opportunity and the listed investment company Pengana International Equities Ltd. He has over 15 years’ experience as a portfolio manager and equities analyst.
Prior to joining Pengana, Steven spent seven years at Hunter Hall International as an investment analyst and portfolio manager. He previously worked as an equities analyst at Tricom Securities and as an investment analyst at Platinum Funds Management.
Steven was awarded a Co-op scholarship at the University of New South Wales, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce (Merit), majoring in Accounting and Finance, and a Masters of Commerce, majoring in Advanced Finance.
He has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst Program and has been awarded the CFA Charter.
Steven Glass
Nick is a founding Partner and the Chief Investment Officer of Munro Partners.
Nick is responsible for the investment management of Munro’s key investment funds and the formulation and implementation of the proprietary investment process.
Nick has been managing global long / short equity mandates for over 12 years.
Key career highlights include:
Nick holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) degree from the University of Melbourne, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance.
Nick Griffin
Blake Henricks is the Deputy Managing Director at Firetrail Investments and co-manages the Firetrail Australian High Conviction Fund.
Prior to establishing Firetrail, Blake worked at Macquarie for over a decade and was responsible for managing the highly successful Macquarie High Conviction Fund, which delivered 10.6% p.a. (after fees) since inception in 2005. The Macquarie High Conviction Fund was one of the top performing Australian equity funds over the medium and long term.
Blake Henricks
Beeneet Kothari is the Managing Partner and Principal Portfolio Manager of Tekne. Prior to founding Tekne, Mr. Kothari was a managing director and portfolio manager at PointState Capital, a multi-billion dollar global macro investment firm.
Prior to founding Tekne, Mr. Kothari was a managing director and portfolio manager at PointState Capital, a multi-billion dollar global macro investment firm.
Before joining PointState at launch in January 2011, Mr. Kothari was a managing director and portfolio manager at Duquesne Capital Management, a thirty-year old investment firm founded by Stanley F. Druckenmiller. At Duquesne, Mr. Kothari managed a global technology, media and telecom portfolio and helped manage the fund’s overall technology exposure. He joined Duquesne as an analyst in September 2005 and became managing director four years later in 2009. Prior to joining Duquesne, Mr. Kothari worked at Morgan Stanley as an investment banking analyst after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004.
He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s joint-degree program in Management and Technology with dual degrees from Wharton and Engineering, and also earned a Master’s in Biotechnology, in four years. He graduated with honors including the prestigious Dean’s Award for excellence from Wharton, awarded to the top student in each graduating class.
Beeneet Kothari
Paul Mason is a Portfolio Manager and Senior Analyst on the Paradice Global Small Cap Fund.
Paul started his career with KPMG 13 years ago in a Corporate Advisory and Taxation role before joining Paradice Investment Management in 2009. Over the past 9 years, Paul has worked in both the Sydney and Denver offices of Paradice, with a dedicated focus on global small cap opportunities.
Paul holds degrees in Commerce and Business Law from the University of Wollongong.
Paul Mason
Mark Nelson is Chairman and Co-founder of Caledonia, a specialist global investment manager founded in 1992 and based in Sydney, Australia. Mark was educated at the Universities of Melbourne, and Cambridge, receiving his Doctorate in 1986.
Dr Nelson has over 30 years experience working in Australian and International investment and equity markets, analysing and assessing the business models of global companies in a wide variety of industries, and successfully placing Caledonia at the forefront of Australian-based equity investment firms.
He is currently Chairman of Art Exhibitions Australia, and a Director of Kaldor Public Art Projects. He is also a governor of the Florey Institute of Neuroscience, a Director of the MindGardens Neuroscience Alliance, and a Director of Telix Pharmaceuticals. He serves on the International Council of the Tate Museums in London, and the Directors Council of The Getty Museum in Los Angeles and a Trustee of The Sydney Swans Foundation, and a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation.
Mark Nelson
Professor Patrick McGorry (MD, PhD, FRCP, FRANZCP) is the Executive Director of Orygen, Professor of Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, and a Founding Director of the National Youth Mental Health Foundation (headspace). He is a world-leading researcher in the area of early psychosis and youth mental health, and has been directly involved in research and clinical care for homeless people, refugees and asylum seekers.
His work has played a critical role in the development of safe, effective treatments for and innovative research into the needs of young people with emerging mental disorders, notably psychotic and severe mood disorders. He has also played a major part in the transformational reform of mental health services to better serve the needs of young people with mental ill-health.
Professor McGorry was a key architect of the headspace model and has been successful in advocating with colleagues for its national expansion. He has successfully advocated for the establishment of a national early psychosis programme based on the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre model. He is frequently asked to advise on early intervention and youth mental health policy both nationally and internationally.
Professor McGorry has published extensively in the specialist literature and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Early Intervention in Psychiatry. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science. He is current President of the International Association of Youth Mental Health and past President of the Society for Mental Health Research (2013-2017) and the Schizophrenia International Research Society (2016-2018).
Professor Pat McGorry
Christina is the founder and portfolio manager of Elephant Asset Management – an investment firm focused on publicly listed small-/mid-cap companies in emerging Asia and Africa. Before that, she was a founding partner and the Chief Investment Officer of Aperios Partners Investment Management, which had a similar investment strategy. Prior to founding Aperios, Christina was a Portfolio Manager at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (“GSAM”) specialising on international small-/mid-cap companies and China A-shares. In 2004, Christina was selected by the CIO of GSAM as the only non-Chinese national to help establish a Shanghai office and to set up the GSAM A-Share China Fund. She remained in Shanghai until 2008 when she took over GSAM’s International Small-/Mid-cap funds as a co-portfolio manager. Christina began her financial career in 2001, joining GSAM initially as a research analyst before taking on portfolio management responsibilities. She has been a CFA charterholder since 2004 and received her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2001.
Christina started her career in the medical profession, received her Doctor of Medicine from the Technical University in Munich in 1997 and practiced in various emerging countries across Asia and Africa. Christina also obtained a Doctorate in Psychiatry from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. She is a member of 100 Women in Hedge Funds.
Christina McGuire
Babak Poushanchi is a Founder and Managing Partner of Cota Capital, an investment firm based in San Francisco, focused on the technology sector.
Babak has spent the majority of his career investing in private and public companies. Prior to Cota, he was a Co-Founder and Co-Portfolio Manager of Newbrook Capital, a global long/short equity fund based in New York City, and a Venture Partner at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, an early stage technology accelerator, in New York City.
Babak spent the early part of his career on the investment teams at Karsch Capital, a global long-short equity fund based in New York City, and at Indosuez Capital, a merchant banking fund based in New York City focused on private investments across the capital structure.
Babak holds a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University.
Babak Poushanchi
Professor Kathryn North AM is Director of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the David Danks Professor of Child Health Research at the University of Melbourne.
Professor North is trained as a paediatric physician, neurologist and clinical geneticist and in 1994, was awarded a doctorate for research in neurogenetics. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Harvard Genetics Program.
Professor North is a national and international leader in the implementation of genomic technologies into clinical practice. She has received a number of awards including the GSK Australia Award for Research Excellence (2011), Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research (2012), Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for service to medical research (2012), and Foundation fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science (2014). Professor North chaired the NHMRC Research Committee from 2012-2018, and currently chairs the International Advisory Board of the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (UK).
Professor Kathryn North
Dr Stewart read the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge (Girton College), obtaining his BA in 2007 and MA in 2009. Following this, he moved to Sydney to work as a research assistant at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute to gain more extensive research experience. He subsequently embarked on a PhD at the University of New South Wales, graduating in 2012. Since then he has built his own research team to tackle important biological questions and his research has provided novel insights into the function of molecules important to disease.
Dr Stewart’s research is dedicated to explaining the fundamental mechanisms that govern essential biological processes involved in disease, such as energy conversion and protein folding. His team uses a combination of experimental methods, such as X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy and intact mass spectrometry. Only by seeing the machinery of life at the atomic scale can we begin to understand life and disease.
Dr Stewart has received many prestigious awards for his research and science communication.
Dr Alastair Stewart
Geoff Wilson has over 37 years’ direct experience in investment markets having held a variety of senior investment roles in Australia, the UK and the US. Geoff founded Wilson Asset Management in 1997. Geoff created Australia’s first listed philanthropic wealth creation vehicles, Future Generation Investment Company and Future Generation Global Investment Company. Geoff is Chairman of WAM Capital, WAM Leaders, WAM Research, WAM Active and WAM Microcap. Geoff holds a number of additional directorships with investment companies and non-profit organisations.
Geoff Wilson
Mr. Wong Kok Hoi is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of APS Asset Management Pte Ltd (APS). Established in 1995, APS currently manages USD2.9 billion* in assets. APS’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, foundations, endowments, financial institutions and family offices. Mr. Wong has over 35 years of investing experience in Asia Pacific equity markets.
Mr. Wong was a Senior Investment Officer, Asia Pacific Equities Department, at GIC from 1981 to 1985. He was CIO of Cititrust and Banking Corporation, Japan from 1986-1990. He was consultant to the Monetary Authority of Singapore from 2000 to 2001. He helped the National University of Singapore set up Singapore’s first endowment fund and served on its first Endowment Investment Committee. A Japan Mombusho scholar, he obtained his Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree from Hitotsubashi University and attended Harvard University’s Investment Appraisal and Management Program. He is a CFA charter holder.
Kok Hoi Wong
Mr Alex Waislitz is Executive Chairman and Founder of Thorney Investment Group, a Melbourne Australia based diversified investor in public securities, private companies and property. Thorney specialises in emerging companies across a broad array of industries including Manufacturing, Technology, Mining Services and Resources. Alex has extensive business and capital markets experience and has been a member of several public company Board of Directors. Alex is also Chairman of Thorney Opportunities Limited, and Thorney Technologies Limited, both Australian sharemarket (ASX) listed investment companies, and Vice President of Collingwood Football Club.
In 2014 Alex established the Waislitz Foundation with the aim of donating $50 million to charity. He is a graduate of Monash University in Law and Commerce and a Graduate of the Harvard Business School OPM Program.
Alex Waislitz
Mor Assia, iAngels Founding Partner and Co-CEO, is an Israeli High Tech insider with over 15 years experience assisting global corporations define new corporate strategies, M&A activities and technological pivots, working on the corporate level of blue-chip companies such as SAP, IBM and Amdocs. Mor has in just 5 years, grown the VC firm from a startup to a mature global company with over US$150M assets under management in divisions and funds that specialize in top-tier tech industry sectors, including Frontier Tech, FinTech, Enterprise Software and Environmental Technologies. Mor holds an MBA from Columbia University (New York), a Mathematics and Computer Science Degree from the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology (Haifa), and is is a graduate of the IDF’s 8200 Intelligence Unit.
Mor puts this same insight, discipline and influence through iAngels, knowing where to look for new technologies, vetting them for market potential and structuring deal terms and a management team that is poised to deliver the best possible returns.
Mor Assia
Renee Lim is a medical doctor, performer, and educator. In addition to her work as the Director of Program Development at the Pam McLean Centre (one of the leading centres in Australia aimed at improving communication education in the Health sector), as a Senior Lecturer in Professional Development at Sydney University, and as a locum doctor in Emergency and Palliative Care Departments across NSW, Renee is also a well established performer, working on shows likes Pulse, Ask The Doctors, Food Investigators, Secret City, East West 101 and Please Like Me, and as a writer/director with KFilms. She is the CEO of Changineers, a social enterprise focused on providing educational innovation for organisations that are creating positive social change, and consults in Health, Education and Engagement across the NFP space, most recently with the Paul Ramsay Foundation and MSF.
Dr Renee Lim
Paul Keating served as Australia’s 24th Prime Minister, from 1991 to 1996, having been Treasurer between 1983 and 1991.
His political legacy includes fundamental social and economic reform that laid the basis for Australia’s last quarter century economic performance and included the deregulation of the financial, product and labour markets. Paul Keating also established compulsory superannuation – now with more than $2.1 trillion under management. He worked towards an inclusive social policy, for Australia to become a Republic and established the Native Title legislation. In foreign policy, he established the APEC Leaders’ Meeting and worked to forge Australia’s place in the region, especially with Indonesia.
His book, Engagement: Australia faces the Asia Pacific (2000) was translated into Chinese and Japanese. In October 2011, his book of post Prime-Ministerial speeches, After Words, was published and Keating, the book based on the 2013 four-part ABC interview series with Kerry O’Brien, was published in 2015. Troy Bramston’s Paul Keating: The Big Picture Leader was published in 2016.
Since 1996 Paul Keating has continued his interest in geo-political and foreign policy and urban design. He is Chairman of Lazard Australia and is the progenitor of the Barangaroo project in Sydney, including and especially, its Headland Park.
Former Prime Minister of Australia
Gladys was first elected to the NSW Parliament as Member for Willoughby on 22 March 2003.
She was elected Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal Party on 23 January 2017 and sworn in as the 45th Premier of New South Wales. Gladys had previously served as Treasurer and Minister for Industrial Relations in the Baird Government since April 2015.
Prior to that, she was appointed Minister for Transport following the election of the O’Farrell Government in March 2011 and served in that role for four years.
She is a Master of Commerce graduate from UNSW and prior to entering Parliament worked as a General Manager for one of Australia’s largest financial institutions. Gladys has also completed studies in Government and Public Administration (B.A., Uni. Syd).
Gladys lives in Willoughby and has had a life-long association with the local area.
Premier of New South Wales, Australia
Ramez Naam is a former Microsoft executive, entrepreneur, inventor, and the Co-Chair of Energy and Environment at Singularity University. He’s also the award-winning author of five books, including the Nexus series of science fiction novels. Ramez’s books have won the Prometheus Award, the Endeavour Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and been listed as an NPR Best Book of the Year.
Ramez spent 13 years at Microsoft, where he led teams working on artificial intelligence, big data, and internet search. His software has touched the lives of more than a billion people. He holds more than 20 patents, including several as a co-inventor with Bill Gates.
Ramez speaks around the world on clean energy, innovation, exponential technology, and how organizations can adapt. He’s briefed Fortune 100 CEOs, the Presidents and Prime Ministers of multiple nations, and the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs. His work has appeared in or been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic, Slate, Business Week, Discover, Wired, and Scientific American.
Futurist
Ben Alexander heads Ardea and has delivered industry-leading relative value returns to fixed income investors since 1998.
Ben co-founded Ardea, a boutique investment manager, in 2008 with the firm now managing $9.4bn in funds.
Ben’s focus at Ardea is centred on relative value opportunities spanning the breadth and depth of the domestic and international fixed income markets. Ben’s philosophy is to identify subjective investment opportunities, underpinned by accurate and consistent measures of value. Under this approach, Ben develops consistent, reproducible measures of value across the entire suite of fixed income and inflation-linked instruments. With value measured on a truly consistent basis, Ben is able to assess and act upon the subjective factors driving any divergence from fair value.
Prior to Ardea, Ben headed the fixed income team at Credit Suisse Asset Management in Australia, with responsibility for investment strategies in the Australian and Asian fixed income markets. Ben also held senior regional positions at Credit Suisse encompassing joint ventures in Asia. Ben began his participation in the fixed income markets with Credit Suisse in 1991.
Ben graduated with Honours in Mathematics from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Ardea Investment Management
Raphael Arndt was appointed as the Chief Investment Officer of the Future Fund in 2014.
He leads a multi-disciplinary investment team, managing more than A$140 billion, making investments across all asset classes and geographies.
In particular, he focusses on the Fund’s “joined up” investment process, bringing together top down macro views and bottom up sector opportunities to construct the best overall portfolio.
This involves managing investments for Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, and four additional funds, including the Medical Research Future Fund, which will be one of the largest medical research funds in the world when fully funded.
Raphael was previously the Fund’s Head of Infrastructure & Timberland where he was responsible for establishing both the Infrastructure & Timberland investment programs.
Raphael is also Chairman of the Investment Committee and a Board Member of the Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, Australia’s largest community foundation.
Raphael started his career as an Engineer working with Ove Arup & Partners in Melbourne and London.
He holds Engineering and Economics degrees and a PhD from the University of Melbourne which focused on risk allocation in Public Private Partnerships.
Future Fund
Mike Cannon-Brookes is the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, a collaboration software company that helps teams organise, discuss and complete shared work. More than 89,000 large and small organisations around the world use Atlassian’s tracking, collaboration, communication, service management and development products to work smarter and faster every day.
Mike has received international recognition for his work, including Ernst & Young’s Australian Entrepreneur Of The Year in 2006 and Australian Business Person of the Year by the Australian Financial Review in 2017. He’s also been honoured by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2009 and was named on the 2017 Forbes Global Game Changers list for reshaping the business world.
Outside Atlassian, Mike is an active angel investor and a non-executive director of Tyro, a technology-focused Australian bank. He serves as an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales’ School of ComputerScience and Engineering, as well as chair of the Computer Science and Engineering Industry Advisory Board.
Mike holds a Bachelor of Commerce in information systems from the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Atlassian
Tim Carleton is the Portfolio Manager at Auscap Asset Management, a value focused long short Australian equities manager based in Sydney. Tim has a proven track record in long short investing having co-founded Auscap and, prior to that, having managed a proprietary portfolio at Goldman Sachs. Tim is a CFA charterholder, a CMT charterholder, a Senior Associate of FINSIA, and has a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sydney.
Auscap Asset Management
Peter founded Cooper Investors in 2001. As Chief Investment Officer, Peter created and implemented the firm’s VoF investment philosophy which is applied across the international, domestic and Asian equities strategies. He is responsible for mentoring investment team members and the standardisation and integration of the process across the investment teams.
Peter has over 30 years of investment management experience. In 1987 he joined the NSW State Superannuation Investment and Management Corporation as a specialist industry analyst and progressed to deputy portfolio manager of the $7bn portfolio. In 1993, Peter ran the Australian equities portfolios for BNP and then joined Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (formerly Mercury Asset Management) where he worked for 7 years, culminating in his position as Head of Australian Equities and Managing Director where he oversaw a team managing $7.5bn in Australian equities.
Cooper Investors
Hamish Douglass is Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Magellan, and Lead Portfolio Manager of Magellan’s Global Equity strategies. Hamish is a former member of the Australian government’s Financial Literacy Board, the Australian government’s Takeovers Panel, the Australian government’s Foreign Investment Review Board and the Forum of Young Global Leaders – World Economic Forum. Hamish is a Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
Magellan
Professor Sally Dunwoodie leads the world in the discovery of the genetic and environmental causes of birth defects. She was appointed to the International Rare Disease Research Consortium Task Force; founded the International Consortium for Vertebral Anomalies and Scoliosis; and established the largest research program identifying the causes of congenital heart disease in Australia.
In 2017, Professor Dunwoodie announced one of the most significant discoveries in pregnancy research in decades. Professor Dunwoodie and her team identified a cause and possible prevention of multiple types of birth defects and recurrent miscarriage. This discovery could prevent thousands if not millions of cases of birth defects worldwide.
Sally is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of NSW. She received her Bachelor of Science (Hons) and PhD from the University of Sydney. She trained as an embryologist in London before joining the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in 2000. With women filling just 15 percent of senior roles in science, Professor Dunwoodie is also an inspiring mentor for young female scientists.
Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute
Shane Finemore is the Managing Partner of Manikay Partners and serves as the firm’s Chief Investment Officer.
Prior to founding Manikay Partners, Mr. Finemore spent 17 years at UBS and predecessor firms. Mr. Finemore was Managing Director and Head of the UBS Fundamental Investment Group, UBS’s Proprietary Multi Strategy Arbitrage and Investment business in the Americas, from 2002 to 2007, and served on the UBS Investment Bank board from 2006. Mr. Finemore was Head of Australian Equities at UBS from 1999 to 2001.
Mr. Finemore began his career with a predecessor of UBS in Interest Rate and Equity derivatives in 1990. He was a member of the board of the Australian Securities Exchange Limited from 2007 to 2013.
Manikay Partners
Steven is the Deputy Portfolio Manager and Analyst of the Pengana International Fund, the Pengana International Fund – Ethical, the Pengana International Fund – Ethical Opportunity and the listed investment company Pengana International Equities Ltd. He has over 15 years’ experience as a portfolio manager and equities analyst.
Prior to joining Pengana, Steven spent seven years at Hunter Hall International as an investment analyst and portfolio manager. He previously worked as an equities analyst at Tricom Securities and as an investment analyst at Platinum Funds Management.
Steven was awarded a Co-op scholarship at the University of New South Wales, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce (Merit), majoring in Accounting and Finance, and a Masters of Commerce, majoring in Advanced Finance.
He has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst Program and has been awarded the CFA Charter.
Pengana Capital Group
Kit Huckvale is a Research Fellow in eHealth at the Block Dog Institute at the University of New South Wales, developing and evaluating novel technologies for mental health in youth. A medically-qualified doctor and informatics specialist, Kit joined the Black Dog Institute in November 2016 from Imperial College London where he was Research Principal for Imperial Tech Foresight, providing technology foresight and horizon scanning for major corporates. He completed his PhD at the eHealth Unit of Imperial College London and holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Manchester. Kit is the recipient of a Black Puppy Foundation postdoctoral fellowship.
Black Dog Institute
Blake Henricks is the Deputy Managing Director at Firetrail Investments and co-manages the Firetrail Australian High Conviction Fund.
Prior to establishing Firetrail, Blake worked at Macquarie for over a decade and was responsible for managing the highly successful Macquarie High Conviction Fund, which delivered 10.6% p.a. (after fees) since inception in 2005. The Macquarie High Conviction Fund was one of the top performing Australian equity funds over the medium and long term.
Firetrail Investments
Philip King is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Regal Funds Management. Phil started Regal alongside his brother in 2004, since then Regal has become one of Australia’s most awarded investment managers, named Australian Hedge Fund of the Year four times.
Recently inducted in to the Australian Fund Managers Hall of Fame, Phil has been recognised as one of Australia’s “most astute readers of the share market” and “shrewdest fund managers”. A reflection of the wealth he has generated for investors over 15 years – $100,000 invested in Regal’s Atlantic Absolute Return Fund in 2004 would be worth over $11million today.
Prior to launching Regal, Phil was a portfolio manager at a London based hedge fund, De Putron Funds Management, for six years. Before that he spent five years with Macquarie Bank as a sell side analyst. Phil also worked with KPMG as a Chartered Accountant for eight years.
Phil holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from the University of New South Wales, is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia and a Chartered Accountant.
Regal Funds Management
Dawn Kanelleas is Senior Portfolio Manager, Small Companies for Colonial First State Global Asset Management (‘CFSGAM’).
In her role, Dawn manages a range of Small Companies portfolios as well as researching and analysing of a range of Australian listed stocks in the Small Companies and MidCap sectors. Dawn has more than 20 years of investment industry experience as a broker and fund manager.
Prior to joining CFSGAM in January 2008, Dawn was a Portfolio Manager in Deutsche Asset Management’s highly-rated Small Companies Team for four years. Prior to this Dawn was with ABN AMRO Stockbroking as a marketing analyst for small companies. She was promoted to Director after four months and turned around a formerly unrated Small Companies franchise.
Dawn has completed a Bachelor of Science with first class honours and a PhD in chemistry. She also has a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance.
Colonial First State Global Asset Management
Joe Lonsdale is a serial entrepreneur and founding partner of 8VC. He serves on several boards including Wish, Addepar, OpenGov, Affinity, Illumio, Radius and Hyperloop-One. Joe is a co-founder of Palantir, a multi-billion dollar global software company best known for its work in defense and finance. Most recently, he was a founding partner at Formation 8, the precursor fund to 8VC, which is one of the top performing private funds. Before that, he founded Addepar, a leading wealth management technology platform, and OpenGov. Previously, Joe was an early executive at Peter Thiel’s Clarium Capital, which they grew into a large global macro hedge fund. He also worked with the financial arm of PayPal while he was at Stanford. Joe received a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford in 2003 and often lectures and writes on entrepreneurship and technology.
8VC
Mr Luciano has over twenty years’ experience gained as a portfolio manager, equities analyst and accountant. Prior to founding VGI Partners in 2008, Mr Luciano spent five years as an Executive Director and Investment Manager with Caledonia Investments in Sydney. Prior to Caledonia, Mr Luciano held positions as a Portfolio Manager at Allianz Equity Management and an equities analyst at BNP Paribas (formerly Prudential-Bache Securities Australia). Mr Luciano commenced his career as an accountant with BDO Nelson Parkhill in 1993.
Mr Luciano graduated from the University of New South Wales, with a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Accounting & Finance where he later completed a Masters of Commerce, majoring in Advanced Finance. He is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. Mr Luciano has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program and has been awarded the CFA Charter.
Mr Luciano is a Director of VGI Partners Global Investments Limited (ASX: VG1)
VGI Partners
Dr. Eliana Marino is the head of the Immunology and Diabetes Research Group at Monash University. She completed her PhD from New South Wales University in 2010, and worked for five years as a research officer and group leader between The Garvan Institute for Medical Research in Sydney and Monash University in Melbourne. She has been awarded with a Career Development Award from JDRF and with the distinguished Type 1 Millenium Award from Diabetes Australia – the largest allocated funding in Victoria. Her latest work has recently been published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Immunology, showing her research is at the cutting edge of the field. Dr. Marino’s lab is one of the leading groups worldwide studying the role of diet and the gut microbiota on the development of type 1 diabetes and associated inflammatory complications. She is a contributor to the Athena Swan at Monash University and an enthusiastic South American soccer fan. She is currently investigating innovative dietary technology that boost the good gut microbiota and modulate the immune system to tackle type 1 diabetes. She can be contacted at eliana.marino@monash.edu or on Twitter at @ElianaMarino.
JDRF Australia
Mark Nelson is Chairman and Co-founder of Caledonia, a specialist global investment manager founded in 1992 and based in Sydney, Australia. Mark was educated at the Universities of Melbourne, and Cambridge, receiving his Doctorate in 1986.
Dr Nelson has over 30 years experience working in Australian and International investment and equity markets, analysing and assessing the business models of global companies in a wide variety of industries, and successfully placing Caledonia at the forefront of Australian-based equity investment firms.
He is currently Chairman of Art Exhibitions Australia, and a Director of Kaldor Public Art Projects. He is also a governor of the Florey Institute of Neuroscience, a Director of the MindGardens Neuroscience Alliance, and a Director of Telix Pharmaceuticals. He serves on the International Council of the Tate Museums in London, and the Directors Council of The Getty Museum in Los Angeles and a Trustee of The Sydney Swans Foundation, and a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation.
Caledonia
Jim Mellon is a British entrepreneur and philanthropist who has gained valuable insights into companies and economies which would become drivers of global growth over many decades. Through his private investment company, The Burnbrae Group, he has substantial real estate investments in Germany and in the Isle of Man, and major shareholdings in banking, commodities, leisure and healthcare.
One of the most successful investors of his generation, Jim’s philosophy is underpinned by his ability to identify “money-fountains” – market trends which leading to step changes and investment opportunities. His first book Wake Up! Survive and Prosper in the Coming Economic Turmoil, foresaw the global financial crisis of 2007-08, while his more recent collaboration Fast Forward, identified technologies and companies which are reshaping lives.
Jim’s latest book, Juvenescence is about the ‘money-fountain’ idea of longevity science. It is a result of a year’s research into both the science and companies involved in the field of allowing people to live longer and healthier lives.
Jim is an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, at University of Oxford and is a trustee of the Biogerontology Research Foundation as well as of Lifeboat.
Burnbrae
Michael Messara is the Co-Chief Investment Officer at Caledonia and sits on the Board of Directors of Caledonia (Private) Investments Pty Limited. Michael joined Caledonia in 2006 after spending five years with UBS AG in Sydney. While at UBS, Michael held a number of roles in equity research with a particular emphasis on the materials, healthcare, media, gaming and small caps sectors. His most recent role before joining Caledonia was Director, Emerging Companies, heading a team of analysts covering Australian listed companies outside the S&P/ASX 100. Michael attended Bond University on a Business School Scholarship and completed a Bachelor of Commerce in 2001, majoring in Finance, Accounting and Economics. Michael is a Non-Executive Director of Arrowfield Pastoral Company.
Caledonia
Ian Narev is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). He was appointed to this role in July 2011, with effect from December 2011.
Ian joined CBA in May 2007. Until January 2009, he was CBA’s head of strategy. From January 2009 until his appointment as Chief Executive Officer, Ian ran one of CBA’s major operating divisions – Business and Private Banking division.
During Ian’s time as Chief Executive Officer, CBA has continued its long-standing customer focus. Ian’s priorities have included strengthening diversity and values among CBA’s leaders, building an innovation culture, applying technology to improve customer experience and productivity, and adapting CBA’s businesses to global regulation.
Prior to joining CBA, Ian was a partner of McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
David is a founding director of Lanyon Asset Management, a value-oriented equity fund manager established in 2009.
David co-manages both the Lanyon Australian Value Fund and the Lanyon Global Value Fund. Since inception in 2010, the Lanyon Australian Value Fund has generated compound returns of 17.4% whilst maintaining average cash balances in excess of 50% of fund assets.
Prior to founding Lanyon, David was previously Head of Equities at institutional fund manager, CP2 (formerly Capital Partners). He has over 18 years of funds management experience working for firms in Australia and the UK.
David has an Economics degree from the University of Adelaide, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia (Finsia) and is a CFA charterholder.
Lanyon Asset Management
Geoff Wilson has over 37 years’ direct experience in investment markets having held a variety of senior investment roles in Australia, the UK and the US. Geoff founded Wilson Asset Management in 1997. Geoff created Australia’s first listed philanthropic wealth creation vehicles, Future Generation Investment Company and Future Generation Global Investment Company. Geoff is Chairman of WAM Capital, WAM Leaders, WAM Research, WAM Active and WAM Microcap. Geoff holds a number of additional directorships with investment companies and non-profit organisations.
Wilson Asset Management
Paul is the Managing Director of CommSec. CommSec is Australia’s leading online broker providing retail and wholesale clients access to online broking, investment products, advisory services, cash management and gearing solutions through its two businesses; CommSec and CommSec Adviser Services.
Paul is a Director of the Stockbrokers and Financial Advisers Association and a representative on Commonwealth Bank’s Diversity and Sustainability Councils. Paul holds a Commerce degree and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
CommSec
Bachelor of Engineering (Hons), Graduate Diploma in Applied Economics, CFA Charterholder.
Matthew has more than 20 years’ experience in investment analysis and funds management. Matthew manages the Greencape Broadcap Fund with around $2 billion in funds under management.
Before entering the financial services industry, Matthew worked as a commodity buyer in the World Wide Purchasing Division of General Motors. In 1997 Matthew took on the role of Head of Research at Taylor Collison Stockbroking, based in Adelaide. Matthew was a highly rated sell-side analyst in both the small caps sector as well as the healthcare sector. He then moved to Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (since acquired by Blackrock). Initially in the role of Fund Manager, he then took on the responsibility of Director and Senior Portfolio Manager in 2003, responsible for managing his own fund with a similar mandate to the Greencape Broadcap Fund that is managed today.
Greencape Capital
Mr Alex Waislitz is Executive Chairman and Founder of Thorney Investment Group, a Melbourne Australia based diversified investor in public securities, private companies and property. Thorney specialises in emerging companies across a broad array of industries including Manufacturing, Technology, Mining Services and Resources. Alex has extensive business and capital markets experience and has been a member of several public company Board of Directors. Alex is also Chairman of Thorney Opportunities Limited, and Thorney Technologies Limited, both Australian sharemarket (ASX) listed investment companies, and Vice President of Collingwood Football Club.
In 2014 Alex established the Waislitz Foundation with the aim of donating $50 million to charity. He is a graduate of Monash University in Law and Commerce and a Graduate of the Harvard Business School OPM Program.
Thorney Investment Group
Annabel Spring became Group Executive of the Wealth Management Division of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) in October 2011.
She is responsible for Colonial First State, Colonial First State Global Asset Management, Wealth Management Advice and CommInsure, and is a member of the Group Executive Committee.
Annabel joined CBA in 2009 as Group Head of Strategy where she was responsible for strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and government relations.
Before joining CBA, Annabel was Managing Director and Global Head of Firm Strategy and Execution at Morgan Stanley in New York. Annabel has worked in the USA, Asia and Australia.
Annabel is Deputy Co-Chair of the Financial Services Council (FSC), and Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. She is also a member of Chief Executive Women.
Annabel holds degrees with honours in Laws and Economics from the University of Sydney and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, where she graduated as a George F. Baker Scholar.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Bobby Yazdani is Founder and Managing Partner of Cota Capital, a firm investing in private and public technology companies. Bobby works full time on the development and support of entrepreneurs through Cota Capital. Through his family office Signatures Capital, Bobby has invested in over 100 private companies. In 2014, Bobby was ranked #1 out of 2000 angel investors for successful follow-on funding by CB Insights. Masimo Corporation was Bobby’s first angel investment in 1989.
In 2015, Bobby endowed the Signatures Innovation Fellowship at University of California, Berkeley to support data science projects with commercial promise. Bobby also serves as a founding member of the Persian Tech Entrepreneurs network, and a National Advisory Board Member of The Reset Foundation.
Bobby founded Saba in 1997, taking the company public in 2000. Today, Saba is the leading provider of Human Capital Development & Management Solutions, serving over 30 million people from 2,200 customers across 195 countries and in 37 languages worldwide. While at Saba, he was named a finalist for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Saba also earned spots on InformationWeek’s Innovation 100 list and Computerworld’s 100 Emerging Companies to Watch.
Prior to Saba, Bobby worked at Oracle in various R&D roles (‘88 –‘97).
Bobby has successfully mentored entrepreneurs and invested in over 100 early-stage startups including Aardvark (acq. by Google), Addepar, Atheer Labs, Baarzo (acq. by Google), BaseHealth, Bina Technologies (acq. by Roche), Bonobos, Canary, Clearspring, CleverSense (acq. by Google), Dropbox, FundersClub, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), GuardantHealth, HomeJoy, inDinero, InstaEdu (acq. by Chegg), KeyChain Logistics, KissMetrics, Klout (acq. by Lithium Technologies), Masimo (NASDAQ: MASI), Medialets, NextBio (acq. by Illumina), OpenGov, PassBan (acq. by EMC/RSA), Qwiki (acq. by Yahoo), Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), SoundHound, SweetGreen, ThinkBig Analytics (acq. by Teradata), Uber, Wash.io, Webs.com (acq. by VistaPrint), ZenPayroll and more.
Born in Tehran, Iran, Bobby completed high school in England, UK and received a B.A. in Applied Mathematics at UC Berkeley.
Cota Capital
Danny Yong is the CIO and Founder of Dymon Asia Capital. Established in 2008, the alternative investment management firm has assets under management of US$5.7 billion across hedge funds, private equity and venture capital strategies as of June 2017. The Firm is headquartered in Singapore and has offices in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Malaysia. In May 2014, Temasek invested USD 500 million in one of Dymon Asia’s funds, and also took a minority stake in the company. Dymon Asia Capital has 142 employees, comprising of 72 investment professionals. Danny has traded FX, fixed income and futures for over 20 years. He was an MD at Citadel Investment Asia where he ran the Asia Macro trading business from 2005 to 2007. Prior to Citadel, he was Goldman Sachs’ Head of Trading for South East Asian FX and Derivatives from 2000 to 2005. Danny started his trading career at JP Morgan in 1997.
Dymon Asia Capital
Dr Kaylene Young was a Sir John Monash Science Scholar who obtained her BSc (hons) from Monash University in 1999. With the start of the new millennium she commenced PhD research at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, where she developed a method to allow researchers to visualize and purify brain stem cells, so that they could be studied. She also identified a key signal capable of directing brain stem cells to make new nerve cells. Kaylene then helped with the successful establishment of the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland, before accepting a postdoctoral research position at University College London (UK). At UCL, Kaylene identified a novel immature cell population in the brain, capable of producing new cells and repairing brain insulation to offset the damage caused by Multiple Sclerosis. She is now leading a research team at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, to develop a new therapy that can direct brain repair in people with MS. The importance of her research contributions are highlighted by her receipt of the Inaugural Metcalf Prize for Stem Cell Research, awarded to emerging leaders of stem cell research in Australia, and the Inaugural Macquarie Group Foundation, MS Research Australia Paired Fellowship, which supports research likely to make a significant impact on the lives of people with MS.
MS Research Australia
Dr Nikki Stamp is a cardiothoracic surgeon based in Sydney, Australia. Nikki is a graduate of the University of Western Australia and has completed training in cardiothoracic surgery with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Nikki wants to share with people an approach to health and wellbeing that is backed up by science and good quality evidence. She has a particular interest in all things related to heart health and in particular, women’s heart health.
Nikki is also a strong advocate for women in surgery and other professional positions. She enjoys mentoring and encouraging young women into roles that are traditionally occupied by men. Nikki enjoys education and thoroughly enjoys teaching young doctors and other hospital staff. She also is committed to advocating to doctor’s well being and prevention and management of mental health issues amongst doctors.
Outside of work, Nikki is a Perth girl through and through, evidenced by a love of the beach and sunshine. Nikki is a (slow) runner and swimmer to help keep fit and healthy. Nikki also is an accomplished singer and can often be found belting out tunes from the music Chicago or Fleetwood Mac and hopes to one day make all four chairs turn around on The Voice.
Cardiothoracic Surgeon
Paul Keating served as Australia’s 24th Prime Minister, from 1991 to 1996, having been Treasurer between 1983 and 1991.
His political legacy includes fundamental social and economic reform that laid the basis for Australia’s last quarter century economic performance and included the deregulation of the financial, product and labour markets. Paul Keating also established compulsory superannuation – now with more than $2.1 trillion under management. He worked towards an inclusive social policy, for Australia to become a Republic and established the Native Title legislation. In foreign policy, he established the APEC Leaders’ Meeting and worked to forge Australia’s place in the region, especially with Indonesia.
His book, Engagement: Australia faces the Asia Pacific (2000) was translated into Chinese and Japanese. In October 2011, his book of post Prime-Ministerial speeches, After Words, was published and Keating, the book based on the 2013 four-part ABC interview series with Kerry O’Brien, was published in 2015. Troy Bramston’s Paul Keating: The Big Picture Leader was published in 2016.
Since 1996 Paul Keating has continued his interest in geo-political and foreign policy and urban design. He is Chairman of Lazard Australia and is the progenitor of the Barangaroo project in Sydney, including and especially, its Headland Park.
Former Prime Minister of Australia
Mike Baird was elected Leader of the NSW Liberal Party at a party-room meeting on Thursday 17 April, 2014, and was later that day sworn in as Premier by the Governor, Professor Marie Bashir. He was the 44th Premier of NSW.
Mike Baird was appointed Treasurer of NSW after the election of the NSW Liberal and Nationals Government on 26 March 2011. In September 2012 he was also appointed Minister for Industrial Relations. Mike had served as Shadow Treasurer since December 2008 and previously as Shadow Minister for Energy, Finance and Youth Affairs.
Mike was elected Member for Manly in 2007 after an 18-year banking career incorporating corporate banking, securitisation, debt capital markets and project finance in Australia, London and Hong Kong.
Career highlights include managing corporate finance transactions across a range of industries for Deutsche Bank and Head of Originations, debt capital markets in London for the NAB.
Prior to his election to Parliament, Mike was Head of Institutional Banking for HSBC in Australia and New Zealand.
Former Premier of New South Wales, Australia
Since the formation of Oaktree in 1995, Mr. Marks has been responsible for ensuring the firm’s adherence to its core investment philosophy; communicating closely with clients concerning products and strategies; and contributing his experience to big-picture decisions relating to investments and corporate direction. From 1985 until 1995, Mr. Marks led the groups at The TCW Group, Inc. that were responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. He was also Chief Investment Officer for Domestic Fixed Income at TCW.
Previously, Mr. Marks was with Citicorp Investment Management for 16 years, where from 1978 to 1985 he was Vice President and senior portfolio manager in charge of convertible and high yield securities. Between 1969 and 1978, he was an equity research analyst and, subsequently, Citicorp’s Director of Research.
Mr. Marks holds a B.S.Ec. degree cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a major in finance and an M.B.A. in accounting and marketing from the Booth School of Business of the University of Chicago, where he received the George Hay Brown Prize. He is a CFA charterholder.
Mr. Marks is a member of the Investment Committees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Edmond J. Safra Foundation; a Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum; Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Drawing School; and an Emeritus Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania (where from 2000 to 2010 he chaired the Investment Board).
Oaktree Capital Management (USA)
Anthony is the Portfolio Manager of the SHARE-PLUS Long-Short Fund.
Anthony has 13 years’ experience outside of Perpetual, most recently at Ellerston Capital where for two years he was the Portfolio Manager for the Ellerston Capital Global Equity Management Fund. Prior to this role, he spent 3 years as an analyst working on a long/short strategy. Prior to joining Ellerston Capital, Anthony worked as an Analyst at UBS Investment Bank for 8 years.
Anthony has a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney and has earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
BEc, CFA
Perpetual
Dr Anita Ayer completed her Bachelor of Arts (French and Politics) alongside a Bachelor of Advanced Science (Hons Class I), and was awarded the University Medal in Medical Microbiology and Immunology before receiving her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics in 2012 from the University of New South Wales. During her PhD under the mentorship of Prof Ian Dawes, Dr Ayer studied the genetic basis of how cells maintained their redox state and the role of antioxidant using microbial model organisms.
In 2013 she joined the Vascular Biology Laboratory at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and in 2016 was promoted to Senior Post-Doctoral Scientist and is also a conjoint lecturer at the University of New South Wales. Dr Ayer has a passion for understanding how cells work and using innovative approaches to scientific discovery.
At the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute Dr Ayer has been using her expertise in redox biology and biochemistry, and genome-wide screening to study the processes that underlie vascular diseases. Dr Ayer’s currently studies the lipid coenzyme Q, and how coenzyme Q levels can be increased in diseases such as heart failure, atherosclerosis and diabetes to treat and or prevent disease.
Dr Ayer is an inspiration to young women in science and demonstrates the tenacity and determination that is required to succeed in the field of medical research
Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute
Anthony is the Portfolio Manager of Industrial Shares, SHARE-PLUS Long-Short and Co-Portfolio Manager of Perpetual Pure Equity Alpha.
Anthony has been with Perpetual for 10 years. Prior to joining Perpetual, he worked at Ellerston Capital for 6 years, where he was the Portfolio Manager for the Ellerston Capital Global Equity Management Fund for 2 years. Before that, he spent 4 years as an Analyst working on a long/short strategy. Prior to joining Ellerston Capital, Anthony worked as an Analyst at UBS Investment Bank for 8 years.
Anthony has a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney and has earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
Perpetual
Dr Heidi Beadnall finalised her clinical neurology training by completing a fellowship in Multiple Sclerosis at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the Brain and Mind Centre (BMC), the University of Sydney. She is currently undertaking a PhD, through the University of Sydney, in the area of Multiple Sclerosis neuroimaging and clinical correlations. Her main interests are Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology, but she also practices as a general neurologist.
MS Research Australia
Madeleine Beaumont has been serving as a Senior Portfolio Manager of Australian Fundamental Equities at BlackRock Asset Management Australia Limited since joining the firm on 1 June 2015.
She began her career in the stock-broking industry, and then transferred to the buy-side at SBC Brinson, where she covered media, food and retail. Madeleine spent 11 years in London, where she broadened her experience, covering the UK and Continental European markets. She worked for SEB and for M&G, the investment arm of Prudential PLC. While at M&G, Madeleine was rated the number 2 Consumer Analyst. She was head of European Equity research and successfully managed a Pan-European Equity Portfolio.
She is a CFA charterholder and holds a Bachelor’s of Agriculture (Hons). Madeleine is also a Graduate of AICD and is involved as a non-executive director in the not for profit sector.
BlackRock Asset Management
Peter founded Cooper Investors in 2001. As Chief Investment Officer, Peter created and implemented the firm’s VoF investment philosophy which is applied across the international, domestic and Asian equities strategies. He is responsible for mentoring investment team members and the standardisation and integration of the process across the investment teams.
Peter has over 30 years of investment management experience. In 1987 he joined the NSW State Superannuation Investment and Management Corporation as a specialist industry analyst and progressed to deputy portfolio manager of the $7bn portfolio. In 1993, Peter ran the Australian equities portfolios for BNP and then joined Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (formerly Mercury Asset Management) where he worked for 7 years, culminating in his position as Head of Australian Equities and Managing Director where he oversaw a team managing $7.5bn in Australian equities.
Cooper Investors
Janchor Partners is an Asia-Pacific focused long-term investment firm based in Hong Kong, with around US$3b of assets under management. John Ho serves as a Deputy Chairman of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Listing Committee, an independent body whose functions are to approve stock exchange listings and has independent oversight over the Hong Kong Exchange Listing Division.
Before founding Janchor Partners, John was the Head of The Children’s Investment Fund (Asia) Limited in Hong Kong, managing the Asia office and its business and investment activities. Prior to that, John was a senior analyst with the Citadel Investment Group in the U.S. and also a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Australia.
Before BCG, John was a lecturer in the School of Banking and Finance at the University of New South Wales Australia, where he graduated in Finance and Mathematics and was awarded the University Medal. His final year dissertation on option pricing of physical assets was published in the Journal of Alternative Investments.
Janchor Partners
Hamish Douglass is Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Magellan, and Lead Portfolio Manager of Magellan’s Global Equity strategies. Hamish is a former member of the Australian government’s Financial Literacy Board, the Australian government’s Takeovers Panel, the Australian government’s Foreign Investment Review Board and the Forum of Young Global Leaders – World Economic Forum. Hamish is a Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
Magellan
Patrick Hodgens is Head of Equities at Macquarie Investment Management and lead portfolio manager of the Macquarie High Conviction Fund, winner of the Money Management / Lonsec Australian Equities (Broad Cap) Fund Manager of the Year award in 2016.
With over 30 years’ experience in investment markets, Patrick has been instrumental in the development of the High Conviction team and the fundamental investment approach at Macquarie Investment Management. In his role, Patrick is responsible for the daily portfolio management of the Fund as well as driving process development across the business.
In his 27 years at Macquarie, Patrick has developed a comprehensive range of style aware equity strategies across a spectrum of risk/return profiles. Today, the Listed Equities business has over $18bn in assets under management, offering a range of products covering index, low risk, high conviction, small cap, long/short, Asian fundamental, and global funds.
Macquarie Investment Management
Shane Finemore is the Managing Partner of Manikay Partners and serves as the firm’s Chief Investment Officer.
Prior to founding Manikay Partners, Mr. Finemore spent 17 years at UBS and predecessor firms. Mr. Finemore was Managing Director and Head of the UBS Fundamental Investment Group, UBS’s Proprietary Multi Strategy Arbitrage and Investment business in the Americas, from 2002 to 2007, and served on the UBS Investment Bank board from 2006. Mr. Finemore was Head of Australian Equities at UBS from 1999 to 2001.
Mr. Finemore began his career with a predecessor of UBS in Interest Rate and Equity derivatives in 1990. He was a member of the board of the Australian Securities Exchange Limited from 2007 to 2013.
Manikay Partners
Dr Itescu has served on the Mesoblast Board since the Company’s founding in 2004, was Executive Director from 2007, and became CEO and Managing Director in 2011. Prior to founding Mesoblast, he established an international reputation as a physician scientist in the fields of stem cell biology, autoimmune diseases, organ transplantation, and heart failure. Dr Itescu has been a faculty member of Columbia University in New York, and the University of Melbourne and Monash University in Australia. In 2013, Dr Itescu received the inaugural Key Innovator Award from the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture for leadership in translational science and clinical medicine in relation to adult stem cell therapy. In 2011, he was named BioSpectrum Asia Person of the Year. Dr Itescu has consulted for various international pharmaceutical companies, has been an adviser to biotechnology and healthcare investor groups, and has served on the Boards of several publicly-listed life sciences companies.
MBBS, FRACP
Mesoblast Limited
Cecile King’s research focus over the past 15 years has been in the field of autoimmune disease and T cell immunobiology. Cecile completed her PhD in Immunology at the Telethon Institute for Child Health/University of Western Australia (1999). At completion of the PhD, she was appointed as a Research Associate in the Department of Immunology, Scripps Research Institute in the Laboratory of Nora Sarvetnick.
Cecile returned to Australia in 2005 and has since established her own independent research group at the Garvan Institute. Her Lab has produced highly cited studies on T helper cell differentiation and autoimmune disease. These studies opened up the field of research on the cytokine interleukin-21 in autoimmune disease and the development of T follicular helper cells.
JDRF Australia
Philip King is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Regal Funds Management. Phil started Regal alongside his brother in 2004, since then Regal has become one of Australia’s most awarded investment managers, named Australian Hedge Fund of the Year four times.
Recently inducted in to the Australian Fund Managers Hall of Fame, Phil has been recognised as one of Australia’s “most astute readers of the share market” and “shrewdest fund managers”. A reflection of the wealth he has generated for investors over 15 years – $100,000 invested in Regal’s Atlantic Absolute Return Fund in 2004 would be worth over $11million today.
Prior to launching Regal, Phil was a portfolio manager at a London based hedge fund, De Putron Funds Management, for six years. Before that he spent five years with Macquarie Bank as a sell side analyst. Phil also worked with KPMG as a Chartered Accountant for eight years.
Phil holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from the University of New South Wales, is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia and a Chartered Accountant.
Regal Funds Management
Kerr Neilson has over 40 years of experience in financial markets both in broking and funds management. This has involved a stint in London, followed by managing the research department for a stockbroker in South Africa. Upon migrating to Australia he joined Bankers Trust, where he made important contributions to the development of that company’s highly successful retail funds management division.
Kerr left Bankers Trust Australia as an Executive Vice President to form Platinum Asset Management in February 1994. In addition to managing Platinum’s global mandates, Kerr held the position of Chief Investment Officer until May 2013. Kerr remains Chief Executive Officer and as portfolio manager for the global mandates at Platinum and is the principal shareholder.
BCom (UCT).
Platinum Asset Management
Dr O’Dea’s research areas include online interventions for depression and anxiety, adolescent mental health and wellbeing, social networking sites and cyber-bullying. Dr O’Dea is interested in improving access to evidence-based care through technology supported through her involvement with the Digital Dog research program.
Dr O’Dea has been involved in the development of multiple e-mental health apps and was also responsible for co-leading the investigations into social media and suicide, including the Twitter studies and the Ground Truth Project, and contributing to the collaborations with CSIRO, Amazon Web Services, and PRADA at Deakin University, established by Prof. Christensen. She currently holds an Early Career Fellowship from the Society for Mental Health Research. Dr O’Dea is leading the development of the Online Clinic for Adolescents and the development of the mobile app for youth relationships.
Black Dog Institute
Mr Luciano has over twenty years’ experience gained as a portfolio manager, equities analyst and accountant. Prior to founding VGI Partners in 2008, Mr Luciano spent five years as an Executive Director and Investment Manager with Caledonia Investments in Sydney. Prior to Caledonia, Mr Luciano held positions as a Portfolio Manager at Allianz Equity Management and an equities analyst at BNP Paribas (formerly Prudential-Bache Securities Australia). Mr Luciano commenced his career as an accountant with BDO Nelson Parkhill in 1993.
Mr Luciano graduated from the University of New South Wales, with a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Accounting & Finance where he later completed a Masters of Commerce, majoring in Advanced Finance. He is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. Mr Luciano has completed the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program and has been awarded the CFA Charter.
Mr Luciano is a Director of VGI Partners Global Investments Limited (ASX: VG1)
VGI Partners
John Pearce joined UniSuper as Chief Investment Officer in July 2009. UniSuper is the superannuation fund dedicated to people working in Australia’s higher education and research sector. With more than 410,000 members and $50 billion in net funds under management, is one of Australia’s largest super funds. UniSuper has about 35 investment professionals involved in allocating funds and investing directly across all asset classes both domestically and globally.
John has over 25 years’ experience in the financial services industry both in Australia and Asia. He has held several senior positions including Chief Executive Officer and General Manager, Investments of Australia’s largest asset management company, Colonial First State, from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 to 2008 John was the Head of Global Asset Management for Ping An, which is China’s second largest insurance company.
UniSuper Management
Michael Messara is the Co-Chief Investment Officer at Caledonia and sits on the Board of Directors of Caledonia (Private) Investments Pty Limited. Michael joined Caledonia in 2006 after spending five years with UBS AG in Sydney. While at UBS, Michael held a number of roles in equity research with a particular emphasis on the materials, healthcare, media, gaming and small caps sectors. His most recent role before joining Caledonia was Director, Emerging Companies, heading a team of analysts covering Australian listed companies outside the S&P/ASX 100. Michael attended Bond University on a Business School Scholarship and completed a Bachelor of Commerce in 2001, majoring in Finance, Accounting and Economics. Michael is a Non-Executive Director of Arrowfield Pastoral Company.
Caledonia
David is a founding director of Lanyon Asset Management, a value-oriented equity fund manager established in 2009.
David co-manages both the Lanyon Australian Value Fund and the Lanyon Global Value Fund. Since inception in 2010, the Lanyon Australian Value Fund has generated compound returns of 17.4% whilst maintaining average cash balances in excess of 50% of fund assets.
Prior to founding Lanyon, David was previously Head of Equities at institutional fund manager, CP2 (formerly Capital Partners). He has over 18 years of funds management experience working for firms in Australia and the UK.
David has an Economics degree from the University of Adelaide, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia (Finsia) and is a CFA charterholder.
Lanyon Asset Management
Geoff Wilson has over 37 years’ direct experience in investment markets having held a variety of senior investment roles in Australia, the UK and the US. Geoff founded Wilson Asset Management in 1997. Geoff created Australia’s first listed philanthropic wealth creation vehicles, Future Generation Investment Company and Future Generation Global Investment Company. Geoff is Chairman of WAM Capital, WAM Leaders, WAM Research, WAM Active and WAM Microcap. Geoff holds a number of additional directorships with investment companies and non-profit organisations.
Wilson Asset Management
Leah Joy Zell (PhD, CFA) is a nationally recognized expert in international investing, and a pioneer in the international small-cap category. From 1992 to 2005, she was a co-founding partner and portfolio manager at Wanger Asset Management, a global small-mid cap equity specialist.
Ms. Zell is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Global Advisory Council of Harvard University, and the Wilson Centre Global Advisory Council in Washington, D.C. Ms. Zell also serves as a Director of the Horton Trust Company LLC, and a member of the Investment Committee of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Previously, she was on the Harvard University Board of Overseers and the Board of Trustees of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Lizard Investors
Mr Alex Waislitz is Executive Chairman and Founder of Thorney Investment Group, a Melbourne Australia based diversified investor in public securities, private companies and property. Thorney specialises in emerging companies across a broad array of industries including Manufacturing, Technology, Mining Services and Resources. Alex has extensive business and capital markets experience and has been a member of several public company Board of Directors. Alex is also Chairman of Thorney Opportunities Limited, and Thorney Technologies Limited, both Australian sharemarket (ASX) listed investment companies, and Vice President of Collingwood Football Club.
In 2014 Alex established the Waislitz Foundation with the aim of donating $50 million to charity. He is a graduate of Monash University in Law and Commerce and a Graduate of the Harvard Business School OPM Program.
Thorney Investment Group
Dr Nikki Stamp is a cardiothoracic surgeon based in Sydney, Australia. Nikki is a graduate of the University of Western Australia and has completed training in cardiothoracic surgery with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Nikki wants to share with people an approach to health and wellbeing that is backed up by science and good quality evidence. She has a particular interest in all things related to heart health and in particular, women’s heart health.
Nikki is also a strong advocate for women in surgery and other professional positions. She enjoys mentoring and encouraging young women into roles that are traditionally occupied by men. Nikki enjoys education and thoroughly enjoys teaching young doctors and other hospital staff. She also is committed to advocating to doctor’s well being and prevention and management of mental health issues amongst doctors.
Outside of work, Nikki is a Perth girl through and through, evidenced by a love of the beach and sunshine. Nikki is a (slow) runner and swimmer to help keep fit and healthy. Nikki also is an accomplished singer and can often be found belting out tunes from the music Chicago or Fleetwood Mac and hopes to one day make all four chairs turn around on The Voice.
Cardiothoracic Surgeon