Top Experts Join New Advisory Board For Financial Services Technology and Innovation

Online, August 12, 2011 (Newswire.com) - This important knowledge sharing network stimulates the use of technology and innovation for the longer term benefit of the UK's financial services sector, and thus the wider economy.

David Bennett, Chairman of FS KTN commented: "We are delighted to have assembled an Advisory Board for the knowledge transfer network that brings together such a distinguished group of people. They combine deep experience of the financial services industry, outstanding academic expertise and broad-ranging contacts in both the public and private sectors.

"I am looking forward to the challenge and engagement that they will provide in shaping the direction of the KTN's activities to improve the performance, sustainability and contribution of the financial services sector to the UK as a whole."

The members of the Advisory Board are:

David Bennett, (Chairman), formerly Group Chief Executive of Alliance & Leicester
Arun Aggarwal, Head of SWIFT's London office and Regional Director for the UK, Eire and Nordics
Professor David Cliff, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bristol
Sir John Gieve, Chairman of VocaLink, Senior Adviser to GLG Man and Chairman of the Clore Social Leadership Foundation
Professor Dougal Goodman, Chairman of the Lighthill Risk Network and Chief Executive of the Foundation for Science and Technology
George Maddison, Vice Chairman of Credit Suisse's UK Investment Banking business
Andrew Milligan, Head of Global Strategy at Standard Life Investments and a member of the Governing Board of the Technology Strategy Board
Lord Ron Oxburgh, former Chairman of The Shell Transport and Trading Company, a member of A*star (Advisory Committee on Science, Technology and Research for Singapore) and Chairman of Falck Renewables and blue-ng.
Adrian Pearce, responsible for Operations Strategic Change in the Investment Banking Division of Credit Suisse
Michael Power, Professor of Accounting and Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR) at the London School of Economics
Marilyn Ramplin, founder of Ramplin Capital
Anthony Salz, Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild
Dr Christopher Sier, Director of FS-Net, the delivery partner for the FS KTN
Nigel Walker, Lead Specialist for High Value Services at the Technology Strategy Board
Dr Richard Ward, Chief Executive Officer of Lloyd's
Dickie Whitaker, Director of FS-Net, the delivery partner for the FS KTN

Adrian Alsop, Director for Research and International Activities at the Economic and Social Research Council to represent the UK Research Councils, and Eve Hall, Director of Operations at the FS KTN, will also attend meetings of the advisory board.

Notes to journalists
For more information, contact
Chris Sier, chris.sier@fs-net.org or +44 (0) 7976 887 642
Parm Evans, parm@parmevanspr.com or +44 (0)7501 462044

The FS KTN is sponsored by the government-backed Technology Strategy Board, which oversees a national portfolio of knowledge transfer networks, with co-funding provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

The FS KTN fosters the technological innovation required to reinforce the UK's reputation as a centre for financial services excellence. By providing a platform and leadership, the FS KTN helps to stimulate interaction between the UK's financial services industry, scientific experts and technology vendors and work to eliminate barriers to innovation.

The FS KTN works across the spectrum of the financial services sector covering everything from retail banking to custody to reinsurance. To ensure the right people are communicating about urgent issues-- for example risk management or behavioural finance --the FS KTN initiates introductions, help secure funding and hosts networking events.

Membership of the KTN is free and open to the entire financial services community, including industry, investors, academia, innovators, government bodies and regulators.

For more information, see
https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/financialservicesktn/overview.

Biographies of the FS KTN Advisory Board members:

David Bennett, (Chairman) was formerly Group Chief Executive of Alliance & Leicester plc and, following the merger with Santander, an executive director at Abbey plc until 2009. He is currently a non-executive director of easyJet plc, where he chairs the Audit Committee, and of CMC markets plc and software solutions provider Clarity Commerce. He is also Chairman of Pacnet, a pan-Asian provider of telecommunications/internet systems connectivity. Bennett brings his long experience in the financial services industry to this role to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing in the industry and offer a range of useful business support and information to its members.

Arun Aggarwal is Head of SWIFT's London office and Regional Director for the UK, Eire and Nordics. Arun leads SWIFT's market, product and customer relationship development in the region across the full breadth of the financial services sector but with a particular emphasis on payments processing, treasury management, securities and FX post-trade and funds distribution. Aggarwal was previously Head of Management Consulting EMEA at Tata Consultancy, MD Strategy and Customer Management at LCH Clearnet and a Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Professor David Cliff is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bristol. Dave works as the Director of the UK National Research & Training Initiative in the Science & Engineering of Large-Scale Complex IT Systems, a seven-year, six-university consortium funded by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council and industry. Cliff previously held academic positions at Sussex and Southampton in the UK and MIT in the USA, as well as working in industry at Hewlett-Packard Labs Europe and as a Director for Deutsche Bank's Foreign Exchange Complex Risk Group in London.

Sir John Gieve is Chairman of VocaLink, the main provider of payment systems to banks in the UK and, increasingly, elsewhere in Europe. He is also Senior Adviser to GLG Man and Chairman of the Clore Social Leadership Foundation, which aims to equip the next generation of third sector leaders with the skills to handle risk and manage complexity. As Deputy Governor of the Bank of England between 2006 and 2009, he was a key player in the battle to stabilise the banking system in the face of the worst financial crisis for a century. Before joining the Bank of England, Sir John was the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office from 2001 to 2005 and responsible for building up the UK's defences against the new threat from international terrorism. That followed 20 years at the UK Treasury, where he was Private Secretary to three Chancellors - Nigel Lawson, John Major and Norman Lamont. Sir John also had spells in private equity and in promoting PFI and public private partnerships.

Professor Dougal Goodman is Chairman of the Lighthill Risk Network, a consortium of insurance companies seeking to build and strengthen connections between the insurance market and the research community. Lighthill is one of the co-founders of the Financial Services Knowledge Transfer Network funded by the Technology Strategy Board that undertakes a similar task across the whole of the financial services sector. He is also Chief Executive of the Foundation for Science and Technology, a charity that promotes debate between both Houses of Parliament, Whitehall departments, devolved administrations, business and the research community on policy questions that have a science or engineering element (see www.foundation.org.uk). He has a special interest in risk management and undertakes consultancy work for the marine insurance market on strategy. Goodman previously was a Deputy Director of the British Antarctic Survey and was a manager for BP in production operations, strategy and planning, research and risk management. He holds a visiting chair at the Risk Centre at Cranfield University. He has made many expeditions to the Arctic and the Antarctic and retains an interest in both the politics and the science of the polar regions. He is serving on the advisory committees for an Antarctic and an Arctic expedition.

George Maddison works for Credit Suisse where he is Vice Chairman of its UK Investment Banking business. He has been an investment banker for over 20 years with a broad experience of advising and financing corporates and financial institutions. Over the years he has been actively involved in large complex transactions involving capital markets on behalf of issuers. Notably from October 2008 through to February 2010, Goodman was a core member of the HM Treasury advisory team in relation to the refinancing of the banking sector and the design and implementation of the Asset Protection Scheme.

Andrew Milligan is Head of Global Strategy at the fund manager Standard Life Investments. Andrew, based in Scotland, is also a member of the Governing Board of the Technology Strategy Board. He is a senior economist with experience of the public and private sectors, banking, stockbroking and fund management. His previous positions have included roles with HM Treasury, Lloyds Bank and Morley Fund Management. Milligan is a Fellow and Council member of the Society of Business Economists.

Lord Ron Oxburgh is former Chairman of The Shell Transport and Trading Company, p.l.c. until its unification with Royal Dutch Petroleum. Lord Oxburgh has been a member of the Science and Engineering Research Council of Singapore and the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, and the Advisory Council for Science and Technology. From 1988 to 1993, Lord Oxburgh was chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, and from 1993 to 2001, Rector of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. He is a member of A*star (Advisory Committee on Science, Technology and Research for Singapore). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Member of the U.S. Academy of Sciences. He taught geology and geophysics at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology and Cornell University. Lord Oxburgh is currently Chairman of Falck Renewables and blue-ng.

Adrian Pearce is currently responsible for Operations Strategic Change in the Investment Banking Division of Credit Suisse where he is developing product family strategies, partnering with IT in the delivery of the technology solutions to meet future business and market needs, and managing a change portfolio through improved Strategic Program Office processes. Prior to this role Adrian worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch for 13 years. Pearce initially joined Merrill Lynch as a program manager on the European Monetary Union project. He then moved into the fixed income business where he was the business manager for government bonds and repo transactions before setting up an ecommerce function with key fixed income business management. Some eight years ago, Pearce moved into technology where his portfolio covered fixed income, currencies, commodities, liquidity, treasury and risk technology at Merrill Lynch. Following the acquisition by Bank of America, he was globally responsible for rates and currencies technology. Pearce is a qualified chartered accountant with five years experience at KPMG. He has a first class undergraduate degree in applied physics from Hull University and a PhD in solid state physics from the Institute Laue-Langevin (Grenoble) and Warwick University.

Professor Michael Power is Professor of Accounting and Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR) at the London School of Economics. Educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and at Girton College Cambridge, he is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and an Associate member of the UK Chartered Institute of Taxation. He has held visiting fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin and at All Souls College, Oxford. Since May 2005, Power has been a non-executive Director of St James's Place plc where he is chair of the risk committee and deputy chair of the audit committee. In 2009 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Economics by the University of St Gallen, Switzerland. His research and teaching focuses on regulation, accounting, auditing, internal control and risk management. His major work, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification (Oxford 1999) has been translated into Italian, Japanese and French. Organized Uncertainty: Designing a World of Risk Management (Oxford 2007) is being translated into Japanese.

Marilyn Ramplin is the founder of Ramplin Capital, an independent institutional advisory firm providing advice and training on risk management, safety of assets, OTC derivatives and UCITS for hedge funds. Prior to founding her own firm, Ramplin spent several years advising clients of JPMorgan on derivatives-related issues. She is also founder of the popular UCITS for Hedge Fund Group on LinkedIn.

Anthony Salz is Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild. He joined Rothschild in 2006 after more than 30 years with the international law firm Freshfields, 10 as the Senior Partner. He was Vice Chairman of the BBC from 2004 to 2006. He is the lead non-executive member of the Department for Education Board. He is a Trustee of the Royal Opera House, The Scott Trust (owner of the Guardian and the Observer), the Tate Foundation, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the Conran Foundation and the Media Standards Trust. Salz is Chair of the Eden Trust (owner of the Eden Project in Cornwall) and is a member of the Advisory Panel for Swiss Re. He is a Governor of the Wellington Academy, a maintained secondary school in Wiltshire. He recently chaired an Independent Commission on Youth Crime and Antisocial Behaviour in England and Wales.

Dr Christopher Sier is a Director of FS-Net, the delivery partner for the FS KTN. Sier is an authority on the operational management of derivatives for the buy side and has advised a wide range of market participants including investment managers, service providers, brokers and IT vendors on strategic and operational issues relating to derivatives. He was a director of London-based Alpha Financial Markets Consulting, a buy-side strategy and benchmarking consultancy. He also spent several years as a consultant at CSTIM (Morse) and AT Kearney. Before coming to the City and after completing his PhD, Sier was a police officer in Edinburgh.

Nigel Walker is Lead Specialist for High Value Services at the Technology Strategy Board. He is responsible for connecting with the FS KTN, the primary delivery mechanism for the Technology Strategy Board's financial services strategy. Nigel has some 25 years of experience in the international financial services industry from a wide range of transactional, operational and knowledge transfer roles at Ernst & Whinney, Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and GE Commercial Finance.

Dr Richard Ward joined as Chief Executive Officer of Lloyd's in April 2006 and sits on the Council of Lloyd's and the Lloyd's Franchise Board. Ward previously worked for over 10 years at the London-based International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), the second largest energy trading exchange - re-branded ICE Futures - as both Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman. Before IPE, Ward held a range of senior positions at British Petroleum (BP) and was Head of Marketing & Business Development for energy derivatives worldwide at Tradition Financial Services. Between 1982 and 1988, he worked as a senior physicist with the Science and Engineering Research Council, leading a number of research and development projects. He is a Council member of Heart of the City Charity and a Board Member of the Geneva Association, the think tank of the world's largest insurers and reinsurers. Ward has a first class honours degree in chemistry and a PhD in physical chemistry from Exeter University.

Dickie Whitaker is a Director of FS-Net, the delivery partner for the FS KTN. Dickie is an expert in catastrophe modelling and is one of the founding members of the Lighthill Risk Network. Whitaker started his career with Sedgwick in 1984, moved to EQECAT in 1994 to assist in the development and sales of catastrophe models, and became a director with responsibility for risk management consultancy services at Intermediary Systems Limited. In 2000, he returned to Guy Carpenter to head up the catastrophe modelling and services division. In 2003, he moved to New York to take responsibility for Guy Carpenter's Instrat operations in the Eastern region and in 2006, returned to London to run Instrat in Europe.

Eve Hall, Director of Operations at the FS KTN, has over 15 years of experience in finance, corporate business development and investor relations from roles with PricewaterhouseCoopers, GE, World Sport Group and at smaller firms consulting for private equity and venture capital.

About the sponsors of the Financial Services Knowledge Transfer Network:

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led executive non-departmental public body, established by the government. Its role is to promote and support research into and development and exploitation of, technology and innovation for the benefit of UK business, in order to increase economic growth and improve quality of life. It is sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). For more information about the Technology Strategy Board please visit www.innovateuk.org.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK's largest organisation for funding research on economic and social issues. It supports independent, high quality research which has an impact on business, the public sector and the third sector. At any one time the ESRC supports over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic institutions and independent research institutes. In co-funding the Knowledge Transfer Network it will contribute to a number of the ESRC's key challenges for social science on global economic performance, policy and management; new technology, innovation and skills and understanding individual behaviour.

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) is the UK's main agency for funding and managing research, training and knowledge exchange in the environmental sciences. It coordinates some of the world's most exciting research projects, tackling major issues such as climate change, environmental influences on human health, the genetic make-up of life on earth, and much more. NERC science is delivered under seven themes, namely climate system, Biodiversity, Sustainable use of natural resources, earth system science, natural hazards, environment, pollution and human health, and technologies.

Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTNs) are national networks in specific fields of technology or business application, which bring together people from businesses, universities, research, finance, the public sector and technology organisations to stimulate innovation through knowledge exchange. Funded primarily by the Technology Strategy Board, their activities play an increasingly important role in the development of the Government's technology strategy, and help to feed and drive the Collaborative Research & Development programme.