Professional Background:

Prior to setting up C-View, I was global head of foreign exchange at Bank of America; I was at the bank for 11 years and had that role for the last four years. At that stage, I had the dubious pleasure of having 23 dealing rooms and 400 people working for me — “dubious” because my enthusiasm really is for managing money more than people. So we set up C-View with the philosophy that it is possible, with the right risk disciplines and risk philosophies, to embrace a fair amount of currency strategy and proprietary risk taking without necessarily having the substantial infrastructure that comes with a banking organization.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities:

I’m the founder and chief investment officer, so most of my time is taken up with working with the other portfolio managers in managing the overall remit and looking at the overall structure of our exposures. I also spend part of my time talking to existing and potential investors.

Education:

In addition to senior school qualifications, I have also gained a series of Institute of Bankers qualifications. However, currency trading from a discretionary standpoint is a discipline best learned through actual trading experience.

Fun Fact

Our location — we’re in a delightful semirural location. We’re extremely flattered that people from all over the world take the trouble to traipse out here. It’s really a testament to the way the world has changed with regard to the electronic transmission of information that we can operate from a location like this.

BIG PICTURE

Biggest trading opportunities for the firm?

The rise and development, and regulatory and economic structuring, of some of the New World Order countries — such as India, China, Brazil and Turkey — as well as some fairly familiar territory in Europe, have been presenting good opportunities and continue to do so. With the Eastern European currencies, the move toward integration of some of those countries into the euro is a similar process to that which we saw with the Mediterranean countries in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, right through to the formation of the euro.

Difference between trading for an alternative investment firm vs. trading for a traditional asset manager?

The first and primary difference revolves around whether a trader needs the information flow that can be luxuriated in by being in a large dealing room. Some traders find the buzz such that being detached from it makes for a struggle. The other side to that is risk management competencies — a good proprietary trader will have, out of necessity, risk management processes that are characteristic of the organization and the risk appetite of the organization. On the buy side, it’s not really a matter of the organization; it’s a matter of the investor. We have to make sure we have the right degree of harmonization of risk approach and risk disciplines for our investors, and those processes are inviolate. Our portfolio managers all have a great degree of maturity and discipline, and so does our risk-management process.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

Finding noncorrelated opportunities. That, and something else I alluded to earlier: We’re familiar with currency markets changing and evolving over time, but the implementation of algorithmic processes, and particularly those that involve more buy-side markets being involved, is probably the biggest challenge. Why? The landscape in the foreign exchange market used to be (until about three to five years ago) one in which the banks were the vastly predominant influence in market making. They had the sense of client service, if you like, to be price maker of last resort. A number of the processes being implemented now, however, are from a buy-side perspective that is algorithmically driven and feels no such sense of responsibility. And that changing landscape is one of the reasons we are looking at how we understand some of those processes, because it’s changing the way short-term markets in particular are operating.

Major Industry Trend

Our markets have become more correlated — not just within the currency space, but across equity and bond markets as well. If markets are in risk-seeking mode, it tends to be that the whole gamut of emerging currencies, equities, etc., do reasonably well. And the opposite also is true — if the markets are in risk-aversion mode, then it tends to be that the same processes are applied across all markets. The challenge now is to find good relative-value opportunities.