Careers in Quantitative Finance 2023/4

We will be hosting a number of presentations from prestigious companies in industry, throughout the year. This should give you an insight into working in industry and what careers are available to you.

11 October 2023

Presentation by Nomura

Anatomy of a Price Model

Presenter: Dr Paul McCloud, Head of Fixed Income Quantitative Research
Description: This talk explores the relationship between derivative price models and the profit/loss generated by the trading strategy, and the origin and management of model risk.

Market Making eFX:

Presenter: Dr Jan Novotny, Executive Director, eFX Strategy
Description: We provide an introduction into electronic market making and present challenges specific to the eFX markets.

Company information:

Nomura is a global financial services group with an integrated network spanning over 30 countries. The Wholesale Digital Office team covers Fixed Income Quantitative Research, eTrading Strategy and Systematic Trading, with expertise in derivatives pricing and hedging, machine learning, low latency algorithms and disruptive investment. Covering most major global financial centres and business lines, the WDO offers a cross-regional/cross-product perspective that is uniquely situated within the industry.

18 October 2023

Early Careers Presentation - Natwest Markets

Natwest Markets Team:

Vladimir Piterberg
Jennifer Bagg
Jonathan Horrocks
Juhwan Son (Zeki)

Speakers:

Vladimir V. Piterbarg has been the global head of Quantitative Analytics at NatWest Markets since 2018, and a Visiting Professor at the Imperial College since 2022. Over the last 20+ years, he held “Head of Quants” positions at Rokos Capital Management LLP, Barclays Capital/Barclays investment bank, and Bank of America. Vladimir Piterbarg has a PhD in Mathematics (Stochastic Calculus) from the University of Southern California. He serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Computational Finance. Together with Leif Andersen, Vladimir Piterbarg wrote the authoritative, three-volume set of books “Interest Rate Modelling”. He published multiple papers in many areas of quantitative finance and won various industry awards.

Jennifer Bagg - studied Mathematics at Cambridge University, and, after graduating, became a quantitative analyst. She has headed up both quantitative research and risk teams in a number of financial institutions (ANZ, Dresdner, Swiss Re), and worked as a consultant in contentious litigation. After taking some time out to be with her two young children, she joined NatWest Markets in 2017 as part of the Comeback (Returnship) Programme. She now heads up the Desk Strats team, working across Front Office business lines.

Juhwan Son - I joined NatWest Markets as a quant intern in April 2022, and wrote my dissertation for Oxford’s MSc in Mathematical and Computational Finance; in conjunction with the xVA & Credit desk. I converted later that year as a graduate quant analyst for the same team. My favourite aspect of the job is that I get the opportunity to solve interesting problems in a competitive industry, and do so alongside a great team of colleagues.

25 October 2023

Presentation by Cubist Systematic

Introduction to quantitative finance and careers at Cubist Systematic Strategies

Presenters:

Jackie Dai (Business Development)
Sahil Puri (Data Scientist Team Lead)
Eric Huang (Research Analyst and Oxford Alum)
Sherlyn Zhang (Data Analyst)

1 November 2023

Presentation by Sopra Steria

Data-driven consulting in the Financial Services sector

Presenters:

Kal Bukovski - Director of 'Academia & Research', Consulting Senior Manager

Julian Wang - Deputy Director of 'Analytics & Automation', Consulting Senior Manager

Company's description:

Sopra Steria, a European Tech leader recognised for its consulting, digital services and software development, helps its clients drive their digital transformation to obtain tangible and sustainable benefits. It provides end-to-end solutions to make large companies and organisations more competitive by combining in-depth knowledge of a wide range of business sectors and innovative technologies with a fully collaborative approach. Sopra Steria places people at the heart of everything it does and is committed to making the most of digital technology to build a positive future for its clients. With 50,000 employees in nearly 30 countries, the Group generated revenue of €5.1 billion in 2022.

We’re a people business, and we’re incredibly proud of the people who make Sopra Steria one of the UK Best Workplaces in the "Great Place to Work UK" Super Large category. Furthermore, we are proud that "Great Place to Work" has ranked Sopra Steria Group 8th on the Best Workplaces in Europe 2022 list! [ https://www.greatplacetowork.co.uk/awards/europes-best-workplaces/2022/multinational/ ]

In this seminar we will talk the audience through what our work on projects for our Financial Services clients looks like, how we approach challenges in this domain to deliver effective data science solutions and some examples of MSc dissertation projects we have supervised in the past.

Website: https://www.soprasteria.com/

8 November 2023

Presentation by Deutsche Bank

Quantitative Trading Presentation aimed to promote our Quantitative Internship to MSc students

Presenters:

Edward White
Hendrik Muer
Ioannis Chryssochoos
Ben Reed
Nourimane Lahmouri

15 November 2023

Presentation by ING

FX & Rates Quantitative Trading / XVA & Macro Trading

The Financial Markets (FM) landscape is rapidly going through a process of digitalisation, at the core of which is eTrading. ING is a market leader in eTrading, providing a best in class client experience in FM trading. This spans from the very liquid and electronic products (cash equities, futures, commodities and FX), fixed-income products (corporate and government bonds) which are in the process of becoming electronic due to balance sheet reduction and regulation, to the less liquid and less electronic derivative products. We are a global team of quantitative traders and developers working on algorithmic pricing, trading models and low latency solutions.

Representatives from 3 different trading desks will discuss opportunities within ING ahead of the graduate recruitment process that kicks off early 2024.

Presenters

Kimiya Minoukadeh (Foreign Exchange E-Trading)

Kimiya has over 10 years experience in FX electronic market making and has been leading the quant team within FX e-Trading at ING since 2021. Prior to ING, she was at UBS on the FX cash and options electronic desks building pricing, hedging and analytics models. She graduated from Oxford University with a BA in Maths & Computer Science and MSc in Mathematical Modelling. She continued her post-graduate studies in Paris at Ecole Polytechnique and received her PhD in Applied Maths from Ecole des Ponts ParisTech.

Kenneth Garrett (Fixed Income E-Trading)

Having graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BA in Mathematics and MSc in Applied Statistics from Oxford University, Ken entered the world of finance as a data analyst, building pricing and risk systems for tier one banks. Following this, Ken spent several years on the buy-side as a "traditional" trader focusing on arbitrage strategies in high grade debt. In 2013 Ken moved to Bank of America, where he lead the automation of European Government Bond trading. Moving to ING in 2018 to establish and build their digitalisation project for Fixed Income. Since 2018, ING have incrementally automated substantial parts of their FI business with the aim of becoming increasing data driven.

Radu Victor Togui (XVA & Macro Trading)

Having graduated from University of Nottingham with a degree in Economics & Econometrics, Radu started in finance as a quant working on capital models, following which he moved into trading, initially focusing on Structured Products before joining his current role in the XVA & Macro trading, where he focuses on cross-asset macro and systematic driven trading strategies and managing exposures of the XVA model.

22 November 2023

Presentation by Antti Vauhkonen from Lloyds Banking Group

Quantitative Risk Management at Lloyds Banking Group
– Presentation by Dr. Antti Vauhkonen, Senior Manager, Counterparty Credit Risk Modelling at Lloyds Banking Group.
In this presentation, I shall talk about quantitative management of financial risks at Lloyds Banking Group (LBG), at the same time giving a general introduction to credit, market and counterparty risk management (since LBG’s risk management practices are not fundamentally different from those of other major banks). Towards the end of my talk, I will also describe specific career opportunities that LBG has to offer in these areas.

Antti Vauhkonen

Antti has about thirty years’ experience as a developer and validator of derivative pricing and risk measurement models (PFE, XVA and VaR), and as a structurer of exotic IR, FX and hybrid derivative products as well as synthetic securitizations gained in a variety of senior quant and risk management roles at top tier investment and commercial banks. Before his current role as Senior Manager in the Counterparty Credit Risk Modelling team at Lloyds Banking Group, Antti was the Head of Risk Policy, Credit Risk Measurement and Regulatory Developments at The Royal Bank of Scotland.
Antti holds Master’s degrees in Mathematics and Mathematical Finance from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and a PhD in Pure Mathematics from Imperial College London. As a visiting lecturer, he has been teaching PFE and XVA modelling to students on the full and part time MSc courses in Mathematical and Computational Finance at Oxford for the past seven years, as well as acting as a thesis supervisor.

27 November 2023

Presentation by Selby Jennings

Title: “Why Quant Finance: the different pathways into hedge funds, proprietary shops, and investment banks and what do they look for?”

Speakers: Konza Akhtar and Matthew Rooney – Selby Jennings

29 November 2023

Presentation by Qube Research Technologies

Company presentation – by Dr Xavier Brokmann

Quant pricing: Theory to Practice – by Andrea Granelli
‘This talk delves into essential pricing models in mathematical finance, from analytical to advanced techniques. Insights on their applications and limitations will also be presented.’

This will be followed by a Q&A session.