Decades of risk management experience in specialty markets where the norms and practices are neither transparent nor well-researched.
Ann Rutledge is a founding principal of R&R Consulting. She received her M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and her B.A. from Wellesley College, where she was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. A Chicago-based commercial banker in the mid-1980s, Ms. Rutledge moved to the futures and options exchange world, where she worked on the floor of the CBOT and later consulted to the CEO of the Hong Kong Futures Exchange on essential reforms that included creating an audit trail, listing the Hang Seng Option contract and writing the first professional competency exam for options. In 1993, she became the Asian global manager of J.P. Morgan Securities’ futures brokerage business. In September 1995, Ms. Rutledge joined the structured finance group of Moody’s Investors Service. Ms. Rutledge is an adjunct assistant professor of asset securitization at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology and visiting lecturer at the University of California at Irvine.
Sylvain Raynes is a founding principal of R&R Consulting. He holds a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University and a Masters in numerical analysis from the von Karman Institute in Brussels, Belgium. In the late 1980s, Dr. Raynes developed the credit, pricing and marketing analytics through which Citicorp’s $30 billion credit card portfolio grew to be a global consumer finance powerhouse. Later, working on the same team as Fischer Black, he conducted the risk analyses of one of the first Derivative Product Companies, and other credit-based initiatives for Goldman, Sachs & Co. before joining Moody’s Investors Service in September 1995. He is an assistant professor in the Applied Mathematics department at Baruch College, City University of New York, and a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Irvine.
David Abitbol is Head of Risk Management and a principal of R&R Consulting. He has an M.S. in Financial Engineering from Baruch College, City University of New York, and a B.S. in Computer Science, Finance and Banking from Esme Sudria Engineering School in Paris, France. His primary responsibility is the development and maintenance of R&R’s expert decision systems. Mr. Abitbol has both a strong theoretical background and extensive, practical work experience in building and supporting trade and wealth-management systems to handle every phase of risk management, from exposure creation to execution and clearing/settlement. He previously developed the portfolio management system for traders at Credit Agricole Asset Management and implemented a complete post-trade Straight-Through Processing system in a DECALOG based platform for CADEXTAN (a SUNGARD Company).
Max Rumyantsev is R&R’s Head of Primary Market Valuation Systems development. He has a B.S. in Aerodynamics from Dnipropetrovsk National University in the Ukraine, and an M.S. in Financial Engineering from Baruch College in New York City. For R&R, Mr. Rumyantsev developed the analytics for an Independent Film Securitization platform, a breakthrough in arts finance. He helped a local bank in Moscow prepare a portfolio of SMA loans for a first-time securitization, and implemented the first pan-Russian credit scoring platform for small-business loans on behalf of a multilateral development agency. He developed the Accidental Trader Game, an interactive fixed-income portfolio management web-based simulation game. Mr. Rumyantsev teams up with David Abitbol on pricing structured securities in the secondary market using R&R Consulting’s proprietary system ABSTRAK®. Before joining the financial sector he worked in aerospace engineering and software development.
Dennis Toth has thirty-five years of experience in film-making and film criticism. At R&R, he built and maintains the film score data base on which the Independent Film Securitization platform runs. Mr. Toth began his career as the Film Coordinator for the Athens International Film and Video Festival (AIFF) and co-founder of the Athens Film Society. From 1979 to 1992, he curated the film program at the Columbus Museum of Art. As a critic, Mr. Toth has served as a juror on the American Film Festival, an advisor for the National Black Programming Consortium Prized Pieces Festival and a guest curator for various other institutions. He has also served as media critic for the weekly Columbus Guardian and the British magazine DreamWatch. His reviews on film-related topics have appeared in a wide spectrum of serious publications, including CHOICE: The College Library Review, Dialogue: An Art Journal, and Point of View: A Film Journal. Mr. Toth received his B.A. in philosophy at Ohio State University and studied film at Ohio University, and has participated in animation workshops at Vanderbilt University and the National Film Board of Canada, Montreal.
Stacy Mosher earned a B.A. at Michigan State University, where she was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and was a graduate fellow at University of Delaware. She spent nearly 18 years in Hong Kong, working primarily as a journalist and then as an investigator with an anti-corruption agency and in the private sector, before moving to New York City in 1999. In New York, she continued with investigations and then worked as an investigative financial journalist before joining a China-focused non-governmental organization for five years. Fluent in Cantonese and written Chinese, Ms. Mosher currently translates, edits and writes as an independent contractor in New York City. She advises R&R Consulting on web content, communications and media trends.
Roanna Kong has a B.Sc. in Economics, with dual concentrations in Sustainable Development and Management, from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Kong was recently promoted to the role of business architect to handle R&R’s systems modeling and requirements elicitation for special projects. Prior to her promotion, as a strategic information consultant to R&R, Ms. Kong led the coordination of website development, design and administration, and streamlined and improved the operational and ergonomic efficiency of the R&R database. Ms. Kong has also handled a number of primary market valuation and structuring activities for R&R. Some of her prior work experiences include undertaking a coverage review of market products and operations procedures for a top European investment bank, and working as a research analyst for a boutique investment management firm. Ms. Kong is bilingual in English and Chinese.
Jeremy S. Taylor has a M.A.L.D. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He brings twenty years of financial experience in both strategic planning and corporate finance for Chase Manhattan and in private banking and investment at Citibank. He has also served as a senior executive of Portfolio Management Data, owned by Standard & Poors. Mr. Taylor is currently a consultant to Catalyst Europe AG, where he researches and designs programmatic strategy and materials for their symposia series. He is an angel investor and mentor to R&R Consulting.
Noah Luk has extensive Wall St. experience with Fortune 500 companies such as Bank of New York Mellon, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, specializing in supporting financial products from IT to structured finance. He earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Queens College and an M.S. in Financial Engineering from Baruch College (CUNY). Mr. Luk has hands-on experience modeling complex structures and helped design and build a graphically intuitive waterfall cash flow modeling system that simplifies analysis and reduces the need to test and debug. Fluent in both English and Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Mr. Luk is helping R&R to further develop the China/Asia markets.