Stephan Solomon is the Chairman of Thalēs Trading Solutions. Mr. Solomon has been a leading figure in the futures industry and a pioneer of raising capital for over 40 years. Prior to co-founding Thalēs in 2012, Mr. Solomon spent 10 years at Société Générale as Senior Managing Director and Principal of the Financial Services Group. Over his career, Mr. Solomon held various senior positions and built businesses at Merrill Lynch, E.F. Hutton, and Prudential Securities. Mr. Solomon holds a bachelor's degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Marc Cohen is the Chief Executive Officer of both Thalēs Trading Solutions and Thalēs Capital Partners and as such, he is responsible for the day-to-day management of these companies. Mr. Cohen has an extensive background and a distinguished career in the alternative investment industry. In his role at Thalēs Trading Solutions, Mr. Cohen has worked with some of the world’s premier firms, providing brokerage services to hedge funds, CTAs, endowments, merchant firms, pension funds, banks, family offices and other institutional investors. In addition, Mr. Cohen and his team provide capital raising and advisory services through Thalēs Capital Partners to leading hedge fund managers across a wide variety of strategies. Prior to co-founding Thalēs in 2012, Mr. Cohen was Managing Director and Principal of the Financial Services Group at Société Générale for 10 years. Prior to that, Mr. Cohen held the positions of Senior Vice President and Senior Sales Manager at Prudential Securities. He began his career in the foreign exchange market, working for Republic National Bank of New York, Fuji Bank, and Merrill Lynch. Mr. Cohen holds a B.S. in Finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University and received an MBA in International Finance from the University of Miami.
Tim O’Shea is President and Chief Operating Officer of Thalēs Trading Solutions and Chief Financial Officer of Thalēs Capital Partners. He is responsible for key corporate functions and manages the complete day-to-day operation of the firm. Prior to joining Thalēs in 2012, Mr. O’Shea was Managing Director of the Financial Services Group at Société Générale in Chicago. During his 19 years at Societe Generale, Mr. O’Shea worked in a variety of areas including operations, technology and sales. He started his career in 1986 on the floor of the CBOT working for Barnes & Co. Mr. O’Shea is a graduate of Roosevelt University with a B.A. in Business Management.
Edouard Robbes is Chief Commercial Officer for Thalēs Trading Solutions and President of Thalēs Capital Partners. Mr. Robbes is responsible for all brokerage sales and capital raising activities. Before joining Thalēs at its inception in 2012, Mr. Robbes held a similar position as Director of the Financial Services Group at Société Générale in New York. Prior to this, he was a hedge fund analyst and portfolio manager at AXA Investment Managers. Mr. Robbes began his career in 2002 as a hedge fund analyst at SG Asset Management. Mr. Robbes received a B.S. in Economics and a M.S. in Finance from Université Paris-Dauphine, France.
Chris Carleton is Director of Client Services for Thalēs Trading Solutions. Mr. Carleton manages the daily trade flow and service relationships for Thalēs. He brings over 8 years of experience in financial services specializing in listed derivatives and OTC cleared products. He acted as the Middle Office Supervisor for the Financial Services Group at Société Générale. Mr. Carleton is a graduate of Southern Oregon University with a B.A. in History.
Peter Lacalamita is Managing Director, Sales and Relationship Management for Thalēs Trading Solutions. He is responsible for developing new relationships for Thalēs. Prior to joining Thalēs, Mr. Lacalamita was a Managing Director in Prime Broker Sales at J.P. Morgan and a Senior Managing Director at Bear Stearns, managing teams, and originating new relationships with hedge funds and institutional investors. In those roles Mr. Lacalamita was responsible for driving revenue growth across asset classes including Equities, Fixed Income, Futures, OTC Clearing, Foreign Exchange, and Prime Custody. Additionally, Mr. Lacalamita was the Key Account Manager for significant hedge fund clients with global accountability across the entire J.P. Morgan franchise. Before joining Bear Stearns, Mr. Lacalamita was the Head of Foreign Exchange Sales for Prudential Securities, where he worked closely with Mr. Solomon and Mr. Cohen. Mr. Lacalamita is a graduate of Fordham University.
Patrick Mannix is Director of e-Trading at Thalēs Trading Solutions. Mr. Mannix is responsible for the coordination and implementation of all aspects of E-Trading Solutions, including direct market access and straight through processing initiatives. Prior to joining Thalēs, Mr. Mannix worked with the Financial Services Group at Société Générale as the e-Trading implementation specialist. Mr. Mannix received a B.S. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
David Modiano is a Managing Director of Capital Strategies at Thalēs Capital Partners. Most recently, David was a Partner and Head of Business Development at Mill Hill Capital, a New York-based credit hedge fund launched in 2016. Prior to that, David spent ten years sourcing, seeding, onboarding and growing early-stage hedge funds as second in command of the seeding team at Investcorp and Lyxor Asset Management. During his time at Investcorp and Lyxor Asset Management, David has personally reviewed, met with or performed in-depth diligence on nearly 1,500 hedge fund managers as a senior investment professional. David negotiated and closed sixteen hedge fund seed deals and drove manager growth.
Mike McGrath is an Executive Vice President at Thalēs Capital Partners and runs the Private Client Solutions Group, the firm’s consulting and distribution practice that assists asset managers in developing and structuring new investment products, creating targeted marketing plans and assisting with distribution into targeted financial advisor networks. His process drives product innovation, awareness, product education, and sales conversion in selected distribution networks.
Mike has had executive management responsibilities across both traditional and alternative asset classes and has also had operating responsibilities for traditional, alternatives and wealth platforms globally. His focus is helping asset management firms re-invigorate sales and investor relations efforts, development of innovative investment products and strategic planning. Previously, he founded and continues to operate MPM Advisors LLC, a consulting firm that assists asset managers on strategic initiatives focused on the individual investor client segment. Prior to that, Mike was a partner at Perella Weinberg Partners, where he led the individual investor client segment. He has also held executive roles at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management including Global Head of Alternative Investments, Chief Operating Officer of Private Wealth Americas and Global Head of Product Development. Mike earned an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a BA from Saint Peter’s University.
Marc Quintavalle is the Director of Marketing at Thalēs Trading Solutions. He is responsible for building, driving and leading the Brand, Digital, Marketing, and Communication efforts for Thalēs products and services. Before joining Thalēs, Mr. Quintavalle was an Assistant Vice President of Social Media at CIT Group, a Marketing Manager at E*TRADE and a Social Media Communications Manager at Putnam Investments. In those roles, Mr. Quintavalle was responsible for lead generation, digital campaign management, and content creation. Additionally, Mr. Quintavalle has helped elevate the digital presences of multiple financial services leaders and business development teams. Mr. Quintavalle is a graduate of Boston University.
Pasquale Tondi is Chief Administrative Officer for Thalēs Trading Solutions and Chief Compliance Officer for both Thalēs Trading Solutions and Thalēs Capital Partners. Mr. Tondi is responsible for all administrative aspects of Thalēs, including account onboarding and compliance. Prior to joining Thalēs, he acted in the same capacity at Société Générale and Prudential Securities alongside Mr. Solomon going back to 1986. Mr. Tondi is a graduate of Queens College with a B.A. in Business Psychology.
David Wulffleff is a Managing Director at Thalēs Trading Solutions. Mr. Wulffleff leans on decades of experience to serve the specialized needs of senior decision-makers at global trading organizations. Prior to joining Thalēs, Mr. Wulffleff was a Managing Director of Clearing Sales at Mizuho Securities. In this role, he was responsible for new client acquisition and the management of longstanding relationships in the Energy, Physical Commodity, Hedge Fund, and Corporate sectors. Before that, Mr. Wulffleff was an Executive Director of International Sales at Banco BTG Pactual in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a Director of Front-to-Back Sales at UBS Securities, Director of the Global Futures Group at ABN AMRO, and Vice President of the Institutional Sales Desk at Man Financial. Mr. Wulffleff attended Fordham University.
Peter D’Angelo is the President of CAM Capital. He assisted in the formation of Caxton Associates in 1983 and retired as President on December 31, 2011. Prior to Caxton, he was Vice President of Commodities Corporation until April 1983. Earlier, he was a Vice President at Marine Midland Bank, managing the corporate lending group responsible for credit and foreign exchange lines to commodity trading companies and brokers until 1981. He began his career at Marine Midland Bank in 1973 in the International Banking Department with responsibilities in strategic planning and budgeting. Mr. D’Angelo is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of St. John’s University in New York.
He received a B.A. degree in economics at Queens College of the City University of New York and was awarded an M.B.A. in finance by St. John’s University.
Gary DeWaal focuses his practice on financial services regulatory matters. He counsels clients on the application of evolving regulatory requirements to existing businesses and structuring more effective compliance programs, as well as assisting in defending and resolving regulatory disciplinary actions and enforcement matters. Gary also advises buy-side and sell-side clients, as well as trading facilities and clearing houses, on the developing laws and regulations related to cryptocurrencies and digital tokens.
Previously, Gary was a Senior Managing Director and group general counsel for Newedge, where he oversaw the worldwide Legal, Compliance, Financial Crimes Prevention (including AML) and Regulatory Developments departments. He also worked for the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Division of Enforcement in New York. For several years, Gary taught a course in derivatives regulation as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School. He currently serves as a practitioner, faculty and mentor for the State University of New York Buffalo Law School’s New York City Program on Finance & Law.
Gary is frequently quoted in the media for his thoughts on the international financial services industry and has published numerous articles on futures and securities industry issues. He regularly lectures or appears as a speaker at futures and securities industry conferences or in training sessions for international regulators. Gary is the sole author and publisher of Bridging the Week, a blog addressing issues in the financial services industry.
Michael Geismar co-founded Quantitative Investment Management with Jaffray Woodriff in 2003. As the President of QIM, Michael oversees the implementation of the firm's investment models and its portfolio management. Michael also manages investor relations and QIM's general business affairs.
Michael and Jaffray first worked together from January until July 1994, when Michael was an assistant trader at Blue Ridge Trading. Michael then worked as an actuary and benefits consultant for Towers Perrin from September 1994 until August 1996, Coopers & Lybrand from August 1996 until October 1997, and William M. Mercer from October 1997 until October 1998, when he joined Capital One Financial as an analyst. In February 2000, he re-joined Jaffray, assisting in the development of an equities investment program and later a futures program that led the two to co-found QIM. Michael graduated from the University of Virginia in 1994 with a B.A. in Mathematics and a minor in Statistics.
Philippe Khuong-Huu, based in New York, is a founding member and the Chief Investment Officer of Alphadyne Asset Management. Prior to forming Alphadyne in 2005, Mr. Khuong-Huu was a Partner at Goldman, Sachs & Co. where he served as head of the firm’s structured credit group and, immediately prior, as head of the global interest rate products group. Mr. Khuong-Huu was also a member of the risk committee covering fixed income, currencies and commodities. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Mr. Khuong-Huu spent ten years at J.P. Morgan where he held various senior management positions within fixed income, equity and credit markets, including as global head of options, exotics and credit derivatives trading (1996-2000), co-head of European swaps (1995-1996), head of U.S. interest rate options (1993-1995) and head of equity derivatives trading in Tokyo (1991-1993). Mr. Khuong-Huu was also a member of Lab Morgan (2000-2001), where he invested in derivatives market platforms including Swapswire and Creditex. Mr. Khuong-Huu began his career at Société Générale in Paris where he was a market-maker in options and then became head of equity derivatives in Tokyo, where he focused on option and index arbitrage (1988-1991). Mr. Khuong-Huu graduated from École Polytechnique and received his Masters in Statistics and Economics from ENSAE. He currently chairs the board of “Friends of École Polytechnique" and serves as a member of FAOU Foundation’s board of directors.
Andrew W. Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, a principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, a research associate of the NBER, and an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute. He received a B.A. in economics from Yale University and an A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. His most recent research focuses on systemic risk in the financial system, evolutionary models of investor behavior, and applying financial engineering to develop new funding models for biomedical innovation. He has published extensively in academic journals (see http://alo.mit.edu) and his most recent book is Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought. His awards include Sloan and Guggenheim Fellowships, the Paul A. Samuelson Award, the Harry M. Markowitz Award, the Eugene F. Fama Prize, teaching awards from Wharton and MIT, and election to Academia Sinica, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the Society for Financial Econometrics.
Jayesh Punater is a successful Entrepreneur, Investor, Fintech Strategist and Thought Leader. He focuses on bringing innovative technology and business models to the FinTech industry. Mr. Punater is the Founder and CEO of Nucleus, a FinTech studio and venture investment platform. Nucleus invests in start-up and advanced stage firms and provides operating capabilities, as well as talent and strategic advice.
Besides Nucleus, he sits on the Board of First AI, a machine learning platform for credit investments, and is on the Advisory Board of Adaptive Management, an alternative data marketplace as well as an analytics tool to help make better investment decisions. He also is a member of the Advisory Board of Thalēs, a technology-based brokerage firm, a member of the Advisory Board of Turner Investments, a member of the Economic Club of NY, and a member of C2C which is a peer CEO organization.
Previously, Mr. Punater founded Gravitas, a leading technology services platform servicing the Asset Management industry. As Founder and CEO, he organically grew the business to a global firm with 300+ employees, with clients managing more than $1.2 Trillion in AUM. Gravitas was sold to a European listed company in 2017.
Prior to Gravitas he worked at Digital Network Associates in New York City, a technology solutions provider that was rated one of the fastest growing Inc. 500 privately held companies and sold to a public firm. Prior to that he worked at 68000 Inc. a highend defense contractor that provided super-charged Apple workstations to the military and other manufacturing firms.
Mr. Punater is a graduate of Arizona State University with a BSEE and a minor in Economics. He has attended Executive Education courses at Harvard University, Stanford School of Business, Wharton, Columbia University, Northwestern University and has taught an entrepreneurship MBA class at Fordham University as an industry CEO.
He enjoys traveling, exploring different cuisines, and practicing mindfulness and visualization. He also likes to swim, run and play golf in addition to chess. Mr. Punater lives in New York City with his wife who is a mindfulness entrepreneur and coach and two sons who are 11 and 8 years old.
Mr. Reed is the Chief Executive Officer and President of Castleton Commodities International. Mr. Reed joined the company in September 2007, became Head of Trading in January 2008 and was appointed to his current position in October 2008.
Prior to joining CCI, he was founding partner and Head of Trading, at Saracen Energy Advisors where he was one of four partners responsible for establishing the fund and growing assets under management from $30 million at launch to $1.4 billion at the time of his departure in September 2007. From 1999 - 2003, Mr. Reed was a Senior Vice President and Head of Trading at American Electric Power Energy Services, which grew to be one of the largest energy trading and marketing companies in the United States during his tenure. Before joining AEP, he was a Director of Power Trading at Enron Corporation.
Mr. Reed earned an MBA (concentration in finance and accounting) from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S., summa cum laude, in mathematics and economics from the University of Pittsburgh.
Edward Rzeszowski is the Managing Member of High Tide Advisors LLC (“High Tide”). High Tide is an independent consulting firm that helps alternative asset management businesses commercialize their organizations and investment products. Mr. Rzeszowski has a proven track record in the alternative asset management industry identifying market dislocations and building successful investment vehicles around these opportunities.
Before establishing High Tide, Mr. Rzeszowski spent over two decades at BlackRock. Most recently Mr. Rzeszowski was a Managing Director and Management Committee member of BlackRock Alternative Advisors (“BAA”), the firm's Hedge Fund Solutions business. Mr. Rzeszowski was a member of the Absolute Return Strategies Manager Research group, his responsibilities included constructing portfolios for large institutional clients globally as well as sourcing, evaluating and monitoring hedge fund strategies.
Mr. Rzeszowski's service with the firm dates back to 1995, including his time with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (“MLIM”), which merged with BlackRock in 2006. At MLIM, Mr. Rzeszowski was a Portfolio Manager and Senior Hedge Fund Analyst within the Hedge Fund Product Development Group. Before joining MLIM in 1995, Mr. Rzeszowski was responsible for the consolidation of managed futures risks at OMR Systems Corporation, a spin-off from Commodities Corporation, which was later acquired by SS&C Technologies Inc.
Menachem Sternberg is the Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer (since Jan 1997), President (since June 2010) and Chief Compliance Officer (since April 2018) of Eagle. Prior to joining Eagle, Mr. Sternberg was a Senior Vice President and senior trader at Caxton Corporation (“Caxton”), and was a principal of Caxton Associates L.L.C. Prior to Caxton, he was the President and a director of Tiverton, a registered commodity trading advisor. From August 1989 to December 1991, Mr. Sternberg also was a Managing Director of Global Research and Trading Ltd., a corporation engaged in the research and development of trading and investment strategies in the futures, forward, and option markets. Prior thereto, he was employed by Commodities Corporation, (U.S.A.) from 1979 until December 31, 1989, first as a research consultant and subsequently as a First Vice President. In 1986, he became an employee of Tiverton in addition to his employment at CC (U.S.A.). Prior to joining CC (U.S.A.), Mr. Sternberg was a systems analyst.
Mr. Sternberg received a B.A. cum laude from Tel Aviv University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. His doctoral dissertation, entitled “Uncertainty and the Use of Forward Contracts”, dealt with theoretical issues concerning hedging and market behavior. In addition to his involvement in global financial markets, Mr. Sternberg has advised governmental and corporate clients as an economic consultant and has authored numerous research and academic papers. He also has served on the faculty of Ben Gurion University and as a visiting scholar at Princeton University.