ORB 6th Anniversary

Phil leads Allia’s social finance programme, developing retail products to raise finance for social ventures. Since joining in 2009 he has managed the issue of numerous bonds by Allia to individual, corporate and public sector investors. Phil is behind the creation of Retail Charity Bonds, a ground-breaking platform to raise unsecured loan finance for charities through bonds listed on London Stock Exchange. He also manages a major investment programme for Scottish Government, providing loans to housing associations to increase the supply of affordable housing.

Mark Glowrey is Head of Retail Bond Sales at Canaccord Genuity, working with both our primary and secondary market teams to develop and manage relationships with fund managers, wealth managers, stockbrokers and advisors in GBP bonds. Prior to Canaccord, Mark spent over a decade as a director of Stockcube Research Limited, a leading independent analysis company where he developed the Fixed Income Investor website, a resource for private investors in the sterling fixed income market. Mark has over twenty-five years' experience of trading securities and advising institutional customers, starting his career as a dealer on the floor of the London Stock Exchange in the early 1980s before moving on to specialise in fixed income securities and treasury products. Mark has also contributed to many well-known investment websites and publications over the years including the Investors Chronicle and is the author of The Sterling Bond and Fixed Income Handbook.

Alastair has been Director of Golden Lane Housing (GLH) since February 2011. GLH is a leading national charity providing housing for people with a learning disability. Under Alastair’s leadership, GLH has grown to over 1,600 tenancies across England and Wales, and has become a Registered Provider. Alastair has led on two bond issues which have raised £21m now invested in buying and adapting much needed, high quality housing in the community for people with a learning disability. Prior to this current role, Alastair led a major programme of regeneration as Director of the Oldham Rochdale Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder for seven years. This involved developing and delivering new housing, renovating or demolishing sub-standard housing, providing major environmental improvements and establishing training schemes for local people. Alastair’s background is in social housing organisations. He was Director of Development and Finance for First Choice Housing Oldham which had around 15,000 properties at the time. He led the establishment of this Arms Length Management Organisation having previously been Assistant Director of Housing for Oldham Council. Alastair has also worked in housing in a variety of housing and support roles in London and in Buckinghamshire. Alastair has a degree, a Diploma in Management Studies,the Chartered Institute of Housing Professional Qualification and is a fellow of the RSA. He has two teenage sons and lives in West Yorkshire.

Tom is a partner at Allen & Overy LLP and works on a broad range of debt capital markets transactions, including standalone bonds, EMTN programmes and liability management. Tom has worked on ORB issues since its inception in 2010, and has advised on ORB issues by a diverse range of issuers such as banks (for example, Lloyds Bank and Tesco Personal Finance), corporates (for example, Burford and Alpha Plus) and supranationals (for example, European Investment Bank).

An expert in socially responsible fixed income, Chris graduated with an MSc in Economics from University College London. Chris has 18 years’ experience of working in the investment industry having started work at Ecclesiastical as a graduate trainee in 1996 for 18 years. He worked as an investment analyst before being appointed Fund Manager of the Amity Sterling Bond Fund at its launch in 2008. He has closely followed the development of Green bonds and represented Edentree when they became a patron of the ORB Charity Bond platform. With a background in managing both equity and fixed interest portfolios he has helped develop Edentree’s generalist philosophy which incorporates a SRI framework throughout the investment process. Chris is also a CFA Charterholder.

Eric Holt has extensive knowledge of UK investment grade and high yield corporate bonds, gained over a career spanning more than 30 years. He has overall responsibility for RLAM’s credit research process, as well as managing the Sterling Extra Yield Bond Fund and the Ethical Bond Fund. He joined RLAM in 1999 following Royal London’s acquisition of Refuge Assurance’s investment team, where he had worked for the previous 20 years. Eric is a graduate of Nottingham University with a degree in mathematics and is an associate of the Institute of Actuaries.

Ross Lancaster is corporate bonds editor at GlobalCapital, the new Euroweek. Before covering investment grade bonds he worked as the newspaper’s leveraged finance reporter for a year and a half, covering private equity and leveraged buyouts. Before joining GlobalCapital he studied Globalisation and Latin American Development at UCL.

Pietro Poletto is the Head of Fixed Income, ETPs and Securitised Derivatives for London Stock Exchange Group. He oversees several markets across London and Milan, used for the listing and trading of a wide range of fixed income and structured products. Pietro joined Borsa Italiana in 1999 and at the time of the merger between London Stock Exchange Group and Borsa Italiana in 2007, was appointed to his current role. He has led a series of local and Group wide initiatives, supervising the launch of the Italian covered warrants market in 2000 and the launch of ETFPlus, Borsa Italiana’s platform for the listing and trading of ETFs, ETCs and ETNs. He also oversees Borsa Italiana’s MOT market, the most successful retail bond trading platform in Europe. Most recently, in February 2010, he oversaw the launch of the Order book for Retail Bonds (ORB), the UK’s first centralised, on-exchange market for retail-sized government and corporate bonds. Pietro is also a Board member of MTS and EuroMTS.

Nikhil was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of LSE plc in September 2015. He also has Group-wide responsibilities for International Development. He is a member of the LSEG Executive Committee. He joined LSEG in May 2014 as Director of International Development and Chief of Staff from the UK Treasury, where he held a number of senior positions over an eleven year period. Most recently he was Director of the Financial Services Group, representing the UK Government's financial services interests in the EU and internationally. He served as the UK representative on the EU Financial Services Committee. Prior to that, he was Head of the Financial Stability unit, overseeing a number of the UK's financial stability interventions during the crisis. Nikhil also served as Private Secretary to the UK Prime Minister for three years from 2005 to 2008.

Stephanie is the Head of Sustainable Capital Markets, which is part of the Fixed Income Structuring and Solutions Group. She has held this role for the past two years, and acts as the product sponsor for green and sustainable bond issues, working closely with issuers, investors and internal clients. Sustainable bonds are fixed income securities, the proceeds of which are allocated to the projects with positive social or environmental impact. Stephanie joined BNP Paribas in 2002 as Head of the Liability Management Group, where she worked for 10 years before moving into her current role. Prior to joining BNP Paribas, she spent nine years at Deutsche Bank, where she was responsible for EMTN and CP origination. Stephanie started her career at Midland Bank, now HSBC Markets, spending 10 years working in their Debt Capital Markets and Money Markets teams. Stephanie is often featured in trade publications and industry conferences, speaking on the importance of sustainability in capital markets. She holds a BA(Hons) in English and French from the University of Cape Town, and a MSc in Economics and Econometrics from Birkbeck College, University of London.

David has over 38 years of financial experience working in the not-for-profit sector - 20 years local authority experience and 18 years working with Housing Associations. He began working in the social housing sector in 1997 with the William Sutton Trust and in 2006 joined Affinity Sutton as Director of Financial Services. After a short period as a consultant to Tribal, he joined Hightown as Director of Financial Services in February 2009. He is responsible for raising finance to support Hightown’s new build programme with a current loan portfolio of £300m. In 2015 was involved in raising £27m of finance funded through the Retail Charity Bond plc platform. He is an Associate of the University of Hertfordshire.

Michael has 17 years’ experience in the European high yield debt capital markets. Michael holds an MBA in Finance and achieved the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 2008. Michael is a published author of “The European High Yield Market: Drivers and Impediments” (Financial Times Publishing, 1999) and “Retail Bonds: an alternative source of liquidity for mid-cap buyouts?” (PEI, 2013). Michael started his career as a secondary market high yield desk analyst at Chase and JPMorgan, before moving into origination and execution roles at DrKW, Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group. In 2011, Michael joined Investec to drive development of the debt capital markets’ franchise with a focus on high yield and retail bond solutions. Since 2011, and as a new DCM entrant, Investec’s DCM platform has executed 16 public retail and high yield transactions and two debt private placements.

Guy Stear is Global Head of Emerging Market and Corporate Credit Research at Societe Generale. In this role he manages two teams: one which covers emerging forex, rates and both local and hard currency bonds across Eastern Europe, Asia and Latam; and a second which makes investment recommendations on both investment grade and high yield bonds in developed and emerging markets from a top-down and bottom-up perspective. Both universes are driven by the need to generate higher returns than in developed markets by taking different risks. Guy has worked at Société Générale since 2002, and his previous roles include Head of Research, Asia (based in Hong Kong). Prior to joining Société Générale, Guy worked in the equity, government bond and forex markets in both research and sales. He has an MBA from Insead, a BSFS from Georgetown University, is a CFA charterholder and passed the Certificate in Quantitative Finance.

Priscilla started her career in 2008 at BNP Paribas London as an Equity Derivatives sales for the Italian retail market. She then moved to Paris in 2012 to cover the Nordics and UK private banking market, with a sales-trading role. She returned to London in 2014 as a senior sales in the Cross-Asset Retail & Private Banking Distribution team, focusing on Tier 1 and Tier 2 Italian banks and private banks. Among the various banking projects, she successfully led in 2015 the first World Bank Green Growth Bond issuance dedicated to the Italian retail market. Priscilla has a double master degree in Quantitative Finance and Financial Mathematics from E.N.S.T.A., a major engineering school in France.

Hugh has written extensively on investment, corporate and sustainability issues for national newspapers including The Observer and The Financial Times. He has interviewed some of the biggest names in global institutional finance and sustainability. He won the respected Aon Consulting award for European Pensions and Investment Journalist of the Year in 2006. From 2004 to 2007 he was Paris Correspondent and prior to that Fund Management Editor at Financial News, part of the Wall Street Journal. Prior to that he was Political and Economic advisor to Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International. From 1997 to 2003 he worked at Investment & Pensions Europe (IPE) magazine where he held the position of Deputy Editor, launch Editor of IPE Real Estate and launch Editor of IPE.com. Hugh trained in journalism as a reporter on the Peterborough Herald & Post and worked part time for the Liverpool Echo.