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The number one site for information on the IFSC and Ireland's International Financial Services Industry Tuesday, 19th March 2024

The Finance Dublin Capital Markets, Structured Finance and Securitisation Conference

Speaker Biographies

John Hurley

Governor
Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland

John Hurley has been Governor of the Central Bank since March 2002. Formerly Secretary-General of the Department of Finance of Ireland he has occupied three Secretary General positions: he was appointed to his former post as Secretary General, Department of Finance, early in 2000. Prior to that he was Secretary General, Public Service Management and Development, in the Department of Finance. He is also a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank

Jeffery Amato

Head of European Credit Strategy
Goldman Sachs International

Jeffery Amato is Head of European Credit Strategy at Goldman Sachs in London. Jeff is responsible for covering credit strategy across European credit markets and is part of the global Credit Strategy team. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs in March 2006, Jeff worked at the Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve. Jeff has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and a B.Sc. degree from the University of Toronto.

Iain Barbour

Managing Director
MBIA UK Insurance Limited

Iain Barbour is a Managing Director at MBIA. Iain has responsibility for MBIAs residential mortgage business together with its Financial Institutions Group business in Europe. Iain also spearheads MBIAs efforts to provide banks with efficient solutions under the impending Basel II environment. Iain Barbour also has responsibility for MBIAs Fixed Income Investor Relations in Europe, working closely with investors in MBIA guaranteed issues and focuses on broadening the investor base across Europe. Iain Barbour works closely with CIOs, senior portfolio managers, senior credit analysts and product development professionals to promote transparency regarding the role played by MBIA in new issues, in addition to exploring new ideas, developing new structures and supporting the MBIA product in order to provide investment solutions or meet investment criteria and strategies. Iain Barbour, who is based in London, was previously head of securitization at Commerzbank. Prior to this, he established Commerzbanks successful structured finance research function. He has worked in various origination, structuring, coverage and research roles at, amongst others, Barclays Capital, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup. Iain Barbour was Chairman of the European Securitisation Forum during 2004 and 2005, and a Member of the Board of the Bond Markets Association during 2005. He remains a Member of the Board of Directors of the European Securitisation Forum.

Moorad Choudhry

Visiting Professor, Department of Economics
London Metropolitan University, and Visiting Research Fellow, ISMA Centre, University of Reading

Moorad Choudhry is Head of Treasury at KBC Financial Products in London. He joined there from JPMorgan Chase Bank, where he was a vice-president in Structured Finance Services sales and marketing. Prior to that he was at Hambros Bank Limited in their Treasury division and at ABN Amro Hoare Govett Sterling Bonds Limited, where he ran the money markets desk. He began his City career at the London Stock Exchange in 1989. Moorad is a Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, London Metropolitan University, a Visiting Research Fellow at the ISMA Centre, University of Reading, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Mathematical Trading and Finance, Cass Business School, and a Fellow of the Securities Institute. He is author of The Bond and Money Markets (Butterworth Heinemann 2001), Structured Credit Products: Credit Derivatives and Synthetic Securitisation (John Wiley 2004) and The Money Markets Handbook (John Wiley 2005).

Robina Barker Bennett

Head of Structured Products
HBOS

Robina started her banking career in 1990 at Hambros Bank, in a variety of areas from Leveraged Loans to Debt Advisory. After 6 years, she left banking and spent time in the corporate and insurance world covering project/structured finance. In the late 90s Robina was part of the management team that set up Enron Credit, the credit trading group within Enron. While there she was responsible for structuring and placing four synthetic arbitrage CDOs. Robina joined HBOS in March 2007 from CIBC, where she held the position of head of the European Credit Structuring team.

Georg Grodzki

Global Head of Credit Research
Legal & General

Georg Grodzki is Global Head of Credit Research at Legal & General having joined from RBC Capital Markets. His previous professional experience includes assignments in merchant banking, management consulting and regional government. Mr Grodzki obtained a Master of Business Administration at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, and a Master of Economics at the University of Cologne.

Fergal McGrath

Managing Director, Global Head of Credit Spread Portfolio
Dexia

Fergal McGrath joined Dexia Dublin in July 2005 as Head of ABS /Structured Credit within the Credit Spread Portfolio business line. Fergal is also a member of the CSP Investment Committee. Prior to Dexia, Fergal spent several years at KBL Bank Ireland where he was Head of Banking and ran the Banking Portfolio primarily composed of investment grade ABS/MBS, Banks and Corporate bonds. Prior to KBL, Fergal spent 5 years in Boston, U.S.A, where he worked as a Property Investment Analyst for Sun Life Financial where he originated commercial mortgages for both securitisation and balance sheet. Fergal is a graduate of University College Dublin where he holds a BA degree and a Masters Degree in Economic Science.

Gerard Scully

Head of Debt Listings
The Irish Stock Exchange

Gerard Scully is Head of Debt Listing at the Irish Stock Exchange. He joined the Irish Stock Exchange in March 2004. From 1987 until 1997 he worked in London as a legal advisor, including 6 years as legal advisor on derivatives and capital markets matters, including some of the first “euro” debt transactions. Since his return to Ireland in 1997 Gerard has worked in a variety of legal and compliance roles.

Turlough Galvin

Partner
Matheson

Turlough Galvin is a partner in the tax and structured finance group of Matheson. He advises blue-chip international corporations, investment banks and financial institutions doing business in and through Ireland. He practices corporate tax specialising in structured finance, securitisation, CDOs, repackaging, credit derivatives and mergers and acquisitions. Turlough was involved in re-drafting the Irish securitisation legislation in 2002/2003, the Irish VAT legislation relating to structured finance transactions in 2004, the Irish tax legislation relating to the implementation of IAS as it impacts upon structured finance transactions in 2005 and the Irish tax legislation relating to withholding tax on bonds in 2006. Turlough lectures and writes regularly on international tax and structured finance issues.

Garry Ferguson

Senior Associate
Matheson Ormsby Prentice

Practice Areas and Professional Experience

Garry advises on structured financing and securitisations. He acts for a wide range of Irish and international financial institutions, investment banks, arrangers and managers in relation to banking, structured finance transactions and securitisations of all types of asset classes. He also has significant experience in asset finance (primarily small ticket leasing and finance) and in general banking and security law.

Prior to joining Matheson Ormsby Prentice, Garry worked as a tax manager in the financial services department of KPMG, Dublin.

Representative Transactions
  • regularly acts as Irish counsel to the Issuer on CDO\CLO\CFO transactions (synthetic and cash, managed and static) originated in US, Europe and elsewhere arranged by Citigroup, Calyon, First Rand, WestLB, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Société Général, KBC and others
  • RMBS and CMBS transactions – acted for Irish counsel to the Issuer on several cash and synthetic securitisations of residential and commercial mortgage loans for KfW, Postbank, BNP Paribas, UBS, Barclays Capital, and others
  • Commercial Paper Programmes - advised on the establishment of US$5 billion commercial paper programme for Bank of Nova Scotia: the establishment of ECP for Société Général and the establishment of the CentreStar programme for NAB
  • regularly advises on various bespoke structured product transactions involving the issuance of two year wholesale debt instruments (for Nomura, Cheyne, Ironshield and others)
  • advised on several Russian originated ABS transactions (consumer loans, credit card receiveables)
  • acted as counsel for the Trustee and Agents (The Bank of New York) on an Irish KBC-arranged CDO squared transaction
  • advised LBBW on the establishment of its FIT Repo programme valued at €1billion
  • Axa: advised on an innovative €200 million securitisation of motor insurance premiums
  • advised the Issuer on a US$23 billion SIV programme arranged by Morgan Stanley

    Professional Memberships and Activities

    Garry is both a qualified solicitor with the Law Society of Ireland and an associate of the Institute of Taxation in Ireland.

    Garry is a lecturer in structured finance with the Law Society of Ireland (Professional Practice Course II and Diploma in Applied Finance). He is also a tutor on company and security law matters with Law Society of Ireland. Garry also regularly writes articles and papers on the area of structured finance.

    Education
    BCL, University College Cork
    LLB, University College Cork; HDBS, University College Dublin

    Martin Reilly

    Audit Partner, Financial Services
    Deloitte

    Martin Reilly is an audit partner with Deloitte and specialises in the provision of services to clients in the financial services sector. Martins main area of expertise is the banking industry, with a particular focus on regulation, risk and capital management and compliance matters. Martin has been with the firm for 10 years. He has worked for the securitisation transaction team in the New York office of Deloitte & Touche LLP and has also worked in the retail funds group of Axa in Melbourne. Present clients include a range of banks, stockbrokers and a number of specialist financial services companies, particularly in the securitisation sector. Martin holds an MBS in Accounting from Dublin City University and is a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. He also lectures on the Institute of Bankers Executive Masters in Risk Management programme.

    Giuliano Giovannetti

    Head of Sales & Market Development
    PMI Mortgage Insurance Company Limited

    Giuliano Giovanetti is responsible for sales, marketing and business development across European markets. Before that, Giovannetti has served as Country Manager for Italy. Prior to joining PMI in 2004, Giovannetti was Managing Director at Colliers Elitrade, a property advisor, where he was in charge of investment banking accounts, portfolio valuations and non-performing loan deals and operations. Giovannetti has held positions with McKinsey & Co., where he served as consultant to the leading commercial banks in the country. He is also co-founder and former CEO of a leading real estate portal. Giovannetti holds a degree in electronic engineering from Politecnico di Milano and an MBA from Insead

    Katrien Van Acoleyen

    Head of the CDO and SIV group
    Standard & Poor's

    Katrien Van Acoleyen is a managing director with Standard & Poor’s London office in the Structured Finance department.

    Since joining S&P in May 2000, she has been involved mainly with Structured Investment Vehicles and CBO/CLOs and is the product manager for CDOs.

    Prior to working at S&P, she was an Analyst in the structured trade finance group with Banco Santander Central Hispano in London and a Credit Analyst in the risk group with Merrill Lynch in London and Paribas in Brussels.

    Katrien holds a Law Degree from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and a Masters in European Management from Ecole des Affaires de Paris (EAP).



    Paul Fenn

    Development Director
    HML - Homeloan Management Ltd

    Paul has held a number of Servicing positions in RMBS Processing for over 20 years.

    He has worked for Originator Servicers and Third Party Servicers including the following roles:

  • Credit management
  • Loss Mitigation
  • New Lending Processing
  • General Administration Processing
  • Shortfall Debt Recovery
  • Business Development

    The main focus of Paul's servicing career remains with Loss Mitigation and Arrears Management where he's spent the bulk of his Servicing career.

    For the last four years Paul has been the Development Director at HML and his primary role is to Secure New Servicing Contracts and Rating Agency Liaison.

    Paul is married with 1 daughter and his hobbies include golf and scuba diving.



    Stephen Hynes

    Managing Director Capital Markets
    GMAC RFC

    Stephen is the Capital Markets Director for GMAC-RFC in the UK overseeing RMAC, the No 1 Non-Conforming residential mortgage securitisation programme as well as the leading whole loan sales programme. Has worked in the UK residential mortgage securitisation market since 1989, initially with CIBC Mortgages and First Mortgage Securities. Spent 5 years in investment banking in the structured finance/securitisation area with Rabobank and ING Barings before joining GMAC-RFC in 1998 in the US.

    Victoria Johnstone

    Senior Vice President, Structured Finance Quantitative Group
    DBRS (Europe) Limited

    Victoria Johnstone joined DBRS Europe in May 2006 as a Senior Vice President in the Structured Finance Quantitative Group. Prior to joining DBRS, Victoria worked for Standard and Poors for 5 years, and was a Director responsible for quantitative analysis of European RMBS and ABS. This role involved credit risk and cash flow modeling, criteria development, and general quantitative support for ABS transactions for both rating to surveillance purposes. Victoria holds a BSc (Hons) and PhD in Psychology (Decision Making Under Conditions of Uncertainty), from the University of Otago, New Zealand.


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