FINforums

Never before in the history of the world have countries, regions and economies been so interconnected. Global macro investors know that political, social and economic upheaval in one locale can have serious implications on their investments, even if they are on the other side of the world.

Join us on March 23 as we bring together top hedge fund managers, political scientists and economists to discuss geopolitical risk and its impact on investing in global macro funds.

Speakers Include:

• Prof. Gary Sick (Keynote Speaker)
  Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs; Senior Research Scholar, Columbia University
• Barton Biggs (One-on-One Fireside Chat w/John Seigenthaler)
  Founder and Managing Partner, Traxis Partners
• John Seigenthaler (Chair and Moderator)
  Former NBC News anchor and CEO of Seigenthaler PR-NY
• Caroline Bentz
  Managing Director, Parker Global Strategies
• Amer Bisat
  Partner and Portfolio Manager, Traxis Partners
• Nicholas J. Colas
  Chief Market Strategist, ConvergEx Group
• Bertrand Delgado
  Senior Research Analyst, Roubini Global Economics
• Justin Dew
  Senior Managing Director, Welton Investment Corporation
• Kenneth Kuhn
  President and Managing Director, Global Capital Investments
   

 Topics Include:

• The crisis in Egypt, its impact on the Middle East and beyond
• Political and economic risk factors that impact global macro investors
• The outlook for emerging markets, with a focus on China and Brazil
• Opportunities stemming from U.S. and European economic and fiscal policies

Who Should Attend:

• Fund Managers, Financial Advisers, Fund Marketers
  Hedge Funds, Private Equity Funds, Commodity Trading Advisors, Real Estate Funds, Traditional Asset Managers, Financial Advisers, Third-Party Marketers
• Investors and Asset Allocators
  (Complimentary — email info@finforums.com to request a pass)
  Public Pension Funds, Corporate Pension Funds, Foundations and Endowments, Fund of Funds, Family Offices, High-Net-Worth Investors
   

  
For sponsorship opportunities, please call Diane Sacken at
(917) 421-9053 or send her an e-mail at d.sacken@jamesgelliott.com

Agenda

11:45 – 12:00	Check-in
12:00 – 1:00	Networking Lunch
1:00 – 2:00	Keynote: Crisis In The Middle East • Gary Sick Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs; Senior Research Scholar
2:05 – 2:55	Roundtable: Emerging Markets Outlook • Kenneth Kuhn President and Managing Director, Global Capital Investments • Caroline Bentz Managing Director, Parker Global Strategies • Bertrand Delgado Senior Research Analyst, Latin America and Emerging Markets, Roubini Global Economics
3:00 – 3:30	Coffee Break
3:30 – 4:10	Fireside Chat • Barton Biggs Founder and Partner, Traxis Partners
4:15 – 5:05	Roundtable: Opportunities and Consequences of U.S. and European Economic and Monetary Policies • Justin Dew Senior Managing Director, Welton Investment Corporation • Amer Bisat Partner, Portfolio Manager, Traxis • Nicholas J. Colas Chief Market Strategist, ConvergEx Group
5:05 – 7:00	Networking and Cocktail Reception

Speaker Bios

Barton Biggs
Managing Partner, Traxis Partners

Barton Biggs is one of the original pioneers in international and emerging markets investing. He is a founder of Traxis Partners and the Portfolio Manager for the Traxis Global Equity Macro Fund, and the DB Platinum Traxis Global Equity Macro Fund (a UCITS fund).

Biggs, 78, was born in New York City. His father was executive vice president and chief investment officer of the Bank of New York and chairman of the Brookings Institute in Washington. Barton graduated from the Lawrenceville School and then Yale University where he majored in English and creative writing and played varsity soccer and rugby. After three years as an infantry officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and a brief fling with teaching, he went to Wall Street as an analyst. Along the way he graduated from the Stern School of Business at New York University earning an MBA With Distinction.

In 1965 he co-founded Fairfield Partners, one of the first hedge funds, and then in 1973 after receiving an offer that was hard to refuse, joined Morgan Stanley as the first partner to be brought in directly from outside the firm. He formed the firm’s research department and was its strategist. At various times he was ranked as the number one U.S. strategist by The Institutional Investor poll, and from 1996 to 2003 was voted the top global strategist. He also formed the investment management division (MSIM) and served as its chairman until his retirement in 2003. In the mid 1990s MSIM was annually adding more new institutional accounts than any of its competitors. At Morgan Stanley, Barton was also a member of the five man executive committee that ran Morgan Stanley and on its board of directors until its merger with Dean Witter in 1996.

In June 2003 Barton left Morgan Stanley with two colleagues, Madhav Dhar and Cyril Moulle-Berteaux, and formed Traxis Partners. He remains a consultant to Morgan Stanley, and Morgan Stanley now owns 19.9% of Traxis. He published Hedge Hogging in 2005, Wealth War & Wisdom in 2008, and A Hedge Fund Tale of Reach and Grasp in 2010. He has three children and nine grand children. He is the chairman of the Riversville Foundation which funds scholarships for African Americans.

Gary Sick
Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs; Senior Research Scholar, Columbia University

Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and is the author of two books on U.S.-Iran relations, in addition to several other edited books and articles dealing with U.S. Middle East policy.

Mr. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa and the Mediterranean. He was the deputy director for International Affairs at the Ford Foundation from 1982 to 1987, where he was responsible for programs relating to U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Sick has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, where he is Senior Research Scholar, adjunct professor of international affairs, and former director of the Middle East Institute (2000-2003). He teaches in the School of International and Public Affairs, where he was voted one of the top five teachers in 2009. He is a member (emeritus) of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and founding chair of its advisory committee on the Middle East and North Africa. He is the executive director of Gulf/2000, an international online research project on political, economic and security developments in the Persian Gulf, being conducted at Columbia University since 1993 with support from the W. Alton Jones, Ford, MacArthur, Carnegie, Soros, Rockefeller and ExxonMobil Foundations.

John Seigenthaler
CEO, Seigenthaler Public Relations-NY

John Seigenthaler , CEO of SPR-NY, develops and manages strategic communications programs for his clients. His extensive background as an award winning network television journalist provides clients with a unique perspective. He specializes in crisis communications, reputation management, new media strategies and executive media training. A professional speaker, panel moderator and discussion facilitator, John travels across the country addressing professional organizations, academic audiences and executives from major corporations on the latest media trends.

John spent more than a decade at the NBC television network as NBC News Special Correspondent and anchor of the top-rated “NBC Nightly News Weekend Edition.” He was dubbed “the thinking man’s broadcaster” by The New York Daily News.

John’s duties at NBC included work as substitute anchor for the weekday editions “NBC Nightly News,” “Dateline NBC,” “Today” and “Meet the Press.” He covered stories around the globe including the 9/11 attacks, terrorist bombings in Europe and the Middle East, the tsunami in Sri Lanka, Hurricane Katrina, presidential campaigns, political conventions and elections.

During John’s tenure at NBC, he was one of the first journalists chosen to anchor newscasts on the new cable news channel MSNBC and hosted the documentary programs “MSNBC Investigates” and “Lockup.” He also was the anchor of “The News on CNBC.”

John is a former member of the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation. He has won numerous awards including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for a series on the civil rights movement, the Headliner Award and the TV News Award from the President’s Committee on the Disabled.

John is a graduate of Duke University.

Caroline Bentz

Caroline Bentz
Managing Director, Director of Research & New Product Development, Parker Global Strategies

Caroline Bentz is a principal of the firm and has been with PGS since its founding. Ms. Bentz serves on the Investment, Portfolio, Implementation and Executive Committees. She is active in manager, market and index research. Her principal areas of focus are manager and strategy due diligence, new product development, and program implementation.

Since 1996, Ms. Bentz has managed the hedge fund Research Team and overseen the development of PGS’ quantitative and qualitative analytics for managers and hedge fund styles. From 1996 through December 2009, she performed onsite due diligence on over 2,300 managers. Ms. Bentz has over 20 years of investment management research experience and over 15 years of alternative investment experience.

Prior to joining PGS, Ms. Bentz was a Research Associate at Ferrell Capital Management, where she participated in manager due diligence and was instrumental in developing a family of single-manager and multi-manager offshore funds. Prior to that, Ms. Bentz worked in the Asset Management Group of Prudential Securities Inc., structuring U.S. and offshore open-end and closed-end funds for retail investors in the U.S. and 14 countries worldwide. Ms. Bentz launched her career as an analyst at Sphere Capital Partners, an investment banking concern, specializing in cross-border transactions and management buy-outs.

Ms. Bentz graduated magna cum laude with an AB in Government-International Relations from Georgetown University in 1990.

Dr. Amer Bisat
Partner and Portfolio Manager, Traxis Partners

Amer Bisat, 46, was born in Beirut, Lebanon to a family with a long tradition of public service (Amer’s father was a senior Ministry of Economy official and his uncle, until recently, the country’s Prime Minister). Amer majored in economics at the American University of Beirut after which he pursued graduate studies in economics and finance at Columbia University in NY. While at Columbia, Amer spent almost two years at the World Bank, turning his experience there into a PhD dissertation that focused on the ideal sequencing of financial sector reform in developing countries. After receiving his PhD in 1991, Amer joined the IMF where he was assigned to the prestigious (and the then newly created) Russia team. While at the Fund, Amer participated in teams that negotiated economic programs in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Egypt, and Cameroon.

After eight years at the IMF, Amer joined the private sector, first on the research side, as the European head of emerging markets economics at Salomon Brothers, and then on the asset management side, holding positions at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, UBS’s prop trading desk, and Rubicon where he became partner in the London based macro hedge fund.

In 2007, Amer joined his former Morgan Stanley colleagues at Traxis, where he launched the Traxis EM fixed income/FX fund.

Amer teaches a popular graduate level class in international monetary theory at Columbia, and continues to write academic and policy research (including a book that he co-authored in 2005 titled Covering Globalization). Amer is on the board of the Arab American National Museumand Alwan for the Arts. He is married to Nadia Abuel-Haj—a renowned professor of Anthropology at Columbia and Barnard.

Nicholas J. Colas
Chief Market Strategist, ConvergEx Group

Nicholas J. Colas is a managing director and chief market strategist for ConvergEx Group. In this role, Mr. Colas is responsible for analyzing trends in the economy and financial markets. A seasoned Wall Street analyst and portfolio manager, he is charged with providing ConvergEx clients with the latest, in-depth market analysis and commentary through our daily Morning Market’s Briefing and is available to speak and provide market commentary to the media in both print and interactive mediums.

Mr. Colas previously worked at Rochdale Securities, LLC, a provider of brokerage and independent research services, where he built the equity research team and oversaw development of a proprietary valuation model. Prior to his tenure at Rochdale, Mr. Colas served as a portfolio manager at SAC Capital and Silver Capital Management. Earlier in his career, he was a senior equity analyst in the auto and auto parts sector of Credit Suisse First Boston. Mr. Colas holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Near Eastern Archaeology from Haverford College.

Bertrand Delgado
Senior Research Analyst, Latin America and Emerging Markets

Bertrand Delgado is a senior analyst for emerging markets and Latin America at Roubini Global Economics. Bertrand’s areas of expertise are monetary and fiscal policy, international economics, inflation, currencies and politics.

Prior to joining RGE, Bertrand was a senior economist and FX strategist at IDEAglobal in New York, where he authored short- and longer-term macroeconomic and currency strategy reports on Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. Bertrand has covered Latin America in different roles and institutions in New York, such as Ramirez & Co., Barclays Capital, BCP Securities and Credit Suisse First Boston, and has been quoted in Bloomberg, Reuters, America Economia, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Market Watch and Business Week as well as in numerous newspapers and magazines in Latin America.

Bertrand holds a master’s degree in international affairs with a specialization in international finance and economics from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a bachelor’s degree in economics with a specialization in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Justin Dew
Senior Managing Director, Welton Investment Corporation

Justin Dew is a Senior Managing Director with Welton Investment Corporation. As the Director of the firm’s New York office, Mr. Dew is responsible for expanding the firm’s East Coast presence and identifying, evaluating and executing strategic growth opportunities.

He previously was a Managing Director and Head of Strategic Development with the Clinton Group where he was responsible for development of new investment strategies, investor relations and sales. Prior to the Clinton Group, Mr. Dew worked at Standard and Poor’s where he served as the Senior Director and Global Head of Alternative Strategies. Mr. Dew holds an MBA from Cornell University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Ithaca College. He joined the firm in 2008.

Kenneth Kuhn
President and Managing Director, Global Capital Investments

Kenneth Kuhn is the president and managing director of Global Capital Investments, Inc. and is involved in the day to day operations of the Iraq Fund. Mr. Kuhn is the founder and principal of a U.S. Department of Treasury registered Money Service Business which specializes in the exchange of exotic currencies. Beginning in 2005, Mr. Kuhn began conducting extensive and ongoing research on the evolving economic and political environment of Iraq, which is the basis of the Iraq Fund. Mr. Kuhn completed his Master’s level education in 1996 at the University of Northern Illinois and currently resides in Saint Charles, Illinois.

Register

Registration for the March 23 event is now closed.

Sponsor

Platinum Sponsor: $14,000

• Logo/link on the FINforums Web site AND the FINalternatives Web site
• Logo/link on all e-mails and marketing materials for the event
• Inclusion of your firm’s marketing materials in handouts
• Name included in pre-conference press release
• Signage at the event
• List of attendees (pre and post event)
• 10 attendees
• Banner ad in FINalternatives Daily for 2 weeks (normally $1,998)

Gold Sponsor: $9,000

• Logo/link on the FINforums Web site AND the FINalternatives Web site
• Logo/link on all e-mails and marketing materials for the event
• Inclusion of your firm’s marketing materials in handouts
• Name included in pre-conference press release
• Signage at the event
• List of attendees (pre and post event)
• 4 attendees
• Banner ad in FINalternatives Daily for 1 week (normally $999)

Silver Sponsor: $5,000

• Logo/link on the FINforums Web site and the FINalternatives Web Site
• Logo/link on all e-mails and marketing materials for the event
• Inclusion of your firm’s marketing materials in handouts
• Signage at the event
• List of attendees (pre and post event)
• 2 attendees

For sponsorship opportunities, please call Diane Sacken at (917) 421-9053 or send her an e-mail at d.sacken@jamesgelliott.com