Mikael started his career as an analyst at Merrill Lynch Investment Banking in London.

In 2004, he moved back to his native Sweden, heading up E*TRADE’s push into structured products in the Nordic countries in co-operation with Merrill Lynch. In 2007, he founded and became CEO of Oak Capital, which by the time of his departure was a leading distributor of structured products in Sweden, Norway and Finland. Mikael joined Garantum in 2010 to oversee and expand the company’s international operation. He was promoted to Deputy CEO in 2012 and took over as CEO in 2015.

Mikael holds an MSc in Economics and Business Administration from the Stockholm School of Economics
 

Sasja Beslik is a Swedish financial expert known for promoting financial sustainability across the world. He has worked at J. Safra Sarasin since 2019. 

Prior to this, Sasja had worked at Nordea since 2009. He was head of the sustainable finance unit from 2017, where he was charged with putting the corporate responsibility unit's decisions into practice.  Before that, he was head of responsible investments and identity at Nordea Asset Management. In 2016, he won the Swedish Banking Profile of the Year award in 2016. In 2011 he was named CEO of Nordea Investment Funds Sweden. During this time, he launched the Nordea’s sustainable find – Stars Fund – which was chosen as Sweden’s best overall equity fund in 2017. It was the first sustainable fund to receive the award. Sasja joined Nordea in 2009, where he became head of responsible investments and corporate government.

Sasja was given the H.M. The King’s Medal, with the ribbon of the Order of the Seraphim from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in 2013 for his outstanding contributions to Swedish environmental and sustainability within the financial sector.

In 2011, he was chosen as a Young  Global Leader at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.

Sasja is the author of the book "Guld och gröna skogar"  – ‘Gold and green forests’ (2019).
 

Melania joined Banca Generali (one of largest wealth management players in Italy) as head of BG Certificate HUB in February 2018. BG Certificate HUB aims to develop innovative, tailor-made solutions for its network of over 2000 financial advisors, through a fully open-ended platform integrated by post-sales services. 

Before Banca Generali, Melania worked as head of the private banking sales team at the Exane Group in Italy and Tecino. Here, she implemented new platforms and procedures to improve the commercialisation of products (including the end-to-end development of the Italian website and the usage of listing procedure,) as well as gaining shares in the Italian derivatives market. Melania was particularly active in building new, tailor-made solutions across a wide range of assets. She began her career as a consultant at Credit Agricole.

Melania holds a graduate degree in economics and financial markets from Bocconi University.
 

Peter is chief executive officer of Quantessence. Quantessence, a Euroclear company, is an agile fintech that brings innovation to the savings and investment market. 
Before joining Quantessence, Peter was managing director at Barclays Capital for eight years, running the bank’s main iCPPI programme. He previously worked for Goldman Sachs, covering large financial institutions, and for JPMorgan, where he had leading roles in trading and sales for over 10 years.
Peter holds an MBA in finance from IAG at UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), as well as an MA in philology from the University of Leuven (Belgium).
 

Veerle joined the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) in 1990 in the supervision of financial information and markets department. During her career with the Belgian financial regulator, she also was a member of the legal department for seven years and a press officer before moving into her current role as the director of the department responsible for the transversal supervision of financial products, such as funds, banking products and insurance products (life and non-life).
 

Oumar has been head of investment structuring, systematic investment, technology and services since July 2018, and was member of EFAMA’s Derivatives Working Group.

In February 2016, he was made head of the structured investment services platform, having been appointed deputy head of the structured products department in 2013. Oumar took lead of structuring, protected active management and quantitative research in 2010, having joined the team as portfolio manager / structurer in 2006. Oumar joined Natixis AM in 2005 as manager assistant in the aggregate fixed income team.

Before joining Natixis, Oumar began his career in 2004, working as a junior consultant within the risk management / quantitative analysis team of Ernst & Young.

He holds a master’s degree in finance from ESCP-EAP and an undergraduate degree from the École centrale de Marseille.
 

Emmanuel Doumas is senior policy officer in the investment management team of ESMA. He has also been working on Priips since 2014, namely, as chair of the Cost Work Stream of the Priips subgroup, working under the direction of the Joint Committee. He has been also in charge of the work on the third-country AIFMD passport and on the Money Market Fund Regulation.

Before joining ESMA, Emmanuel was deputy head of the savings and financial market division, in charge of asset management related issues, of the Directorate-General of the French Treasury.

He graduated in with a degree in maths and physics from the French École normale supérieure and obtained a PhD in economics.
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Tiago is a managing director at SRP. He joined SRP as a global head of data. SRP is a part of Euromoney Group, and provides highest quality market intelligence and investor education to the structured product market, helping the players to be in the vanguard of the derivatives industry. Previously, Tiago spent four years at Caixa Geral de Depósitos as an analyst for the structured product offering in the Portuguese market. Tiago has also worked at BNP Paribas and DIF Broker.
 

Simon Howard joined UKSIF as chief executive in May 2013. He is a former group chief investment officer, with over twenty years of investment management experience. He worked for Liverpool Victoria and Friends Provident after being managing director of 3i Asset Management. Prior to joining UKSIF, Simon was head of sustainable financial markets at the charity Forum for the Future.
Simon moved into sustainability after being asked to forecast long-term asset class returns. These are likely to be materially different going forward as issues such as climate change, resource depletion and stakeholder rights bite. It is clear that other sectors of financial services will also be affected, such as banking, insurance and personal financial services. Simon now seeks to use the insight and expertise of UKSIF members throughout UK financial services to drive change for the benefit of society.
 

John has more than 15 years of wealth management and financial market experience spanning across structured products, rates, credit, foreign exchange and equity. His role involves making financial products accessible and helping wealth management clients to understand their relative risk and rewards. He is skilled in people development and knowledge transfer, often participating in industry conversations, building strong partnerships and simplifying advisory delivery. Leading a team of passionate and highly skilled wealth management professionals, his business approach is always portfolio- and client-centric with the vision towards sustainable growth both for clients and the bank.

Manuel Meza Piza is head of global structured solutions at BBVA Bancomer. Before that, he was head of structuring and development at the same bank. Manuel has previously worked at Banca Serfin Santander in Madrid and México, and BBVA.
 

Danila manages the structured products business at Alfa Capital, which he has worked at since he joined as a junior trader in 2011. Since then, he has implemented a lot of features and ideas which have become standard within Russia’s structured products market.
Danila’s team is responsible for the design and development of structured products for various clients, across retail, corporate and high-net-worth individuals. His desk is among the leaders in Russia’s structured products market.
 

Frédéric Pelèse is deputy executive director of the AMF’s regulatory policy and international affairs directorate.
Between 2014 and 2017, he was seconded to the European Commission in the security markets unit of the Directorate‑General for financial stability, financial services and capital markets union (DG FISMA.)  Here, he contributed to the elaboration of the Prospectus Regulation, the development of the Level 2 measures of MiFID II, as well as the review of the Short Selling Regulation.
He was appointed deputy to the head of this division in 2013, in which capacity he was closely involved in the French implementation of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) and the reform of money market funds.
Before this, he worked in the Regulatory Policy and International Affairs Directorate as senior advisor in the asset management regulation division. He joined the AMF’s corporate finance directorate in 2005, where his responsibilities included controlling takeover bids and contributing to the development of French takeover law.
Frédéric began his career in 2000 in the mergers and acquisitions advisory department of Crédit Agricole Indosuez in Paris. He is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris and the London School of Economics.
 

Christian Probst is the European head of product structuring at Munich Re Financial Solution, where he is responsible for the joint design, structuring and hedging of capital market-linked savings and retirement products. Munich Re Financial Solutions provides its clients with a modular risk-transfer approach including capital markets risks, insurance risks and the associated cross risks. Furthermore it can provide both in-house and external investment content as well as white-labelled digital front-end tools for direct and assisted sales.

Prior to joining Munich Re in 2018, Christian held various institutional and retail structuring positions in Citigroup, Bank or America Merrill Lynch and started his career in private investor products structuring at ABN Amro.
 

Rupertus joined SDX in September 2018 as head of sales. He previously served over 25 years as derivative/structured product veteran for several banks including BNP Paribas (Paris/Frankfurt), ABN AMRO (Hong Kong/London) and Maquarie (Frankfurt).

Rupertus joined SDX in September 2018, driven by his entrepreneurship for new business developments, to help build the first end-to-end regulated exchange using DLT. Prior to this, from 2012 to 2018, Rupertus served as head of sales and marketing for the Stuttgart Stock Exchange and as MD for S CATS, the leading bilataral OTC trading platform for structured products in Europe. He started his career as a market maker for options and futures in the early 1990s and quickly moved into the upcoming structured products arena, leading the global retail structured product activity for BNP Paribas. He was the driving force for the creation of CBBCs in Hong Kong.
 

Taras joined BCS Global Markets nine years ago as head of derivatives. His team was instrumental in setting up several EMTN programmes for the company, launching a diversified lineup of structured products and coming up with new structured payoff types geared towards Russian and European markets. This allowed BCS to become the leading manufacturer in the Russian market. 

Taras joined BCS from ECM structured solutions at Citigroup, where he had served as a director. Before that, he held various sales and structuring positions in equity and commodity derivatives, at NG Barings, Commerzbank, J.P.Morgan and Société Générale. He began his career in derivatives risk management at Morgan Stanley in New York.

Taras holds a Ph.D. from New York University and a Bachelor’s degree from Moscow State University.