Clearing Panels 2009 – Singapore edition

Mr Aston is Head of Institutions for Singapore Exchange (SGX). His responsibilities cover the management of business relationships with all institutional clients in the securities and derivatives markets.
He joined SGX in August, 2008. He was previously Head of Exchange Traded Derivatives with UBS Futures Singapore Ltd from 2006, where he headed the listed derivatives business and merged the ABN AMRO and UBS business lines. Mr Aston has spent the last 15 years of his career in various management roles within the exchange-traded derivatives business at global investment banks in Asia. He started his career as a stockbroker in Vancouver, Canada.
Mr Aston graduated with a Bachelor of Science Honours degree in Industrial and Business Economics from the London School of Economics in 1991. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Dr. John Mathias is the Chief Business Officer of Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX). Mr. Mathias has over 30 years of experience in the global capital markets. Prior to joining SMX, he was with Merrill Lynch for the past 20 years; his last position being Director of Financial Futures and Options. At Merrill Lynch, his responsibilities in the Financial & Futures Options Group included managing global market relations, market strategy and access to new markets, involving the planning and coordination of new market membership or market access initiatives. Mr. Mathias has been a Board Member of several prestigious institutions. Prior to joining SMX in Singapore, he was a Member of the Eurex Exchange Council and a Board Member of The Futures and Options Association in London and The Swiss Futures and Options Association in Geneva. A former Chairman of the European Chapter of the Futures Industry Association, he is currently on the Editorial Board of the FIA’s ‘Futures Industry’ magazine. Mr. Mathias was educated at the London School of Economics and Oxford University, from which he obtained a D.Phil.

James Morley is the Asia Regional Head of Listed Derivatives Operations at Morgan Stanley, having previously managed the same function for Europe for two years. In addition to Listed Derivatives, he has worked in Money Markets, Foreign Exchange, Commodities, and OTC Derivatives, in areas as diverse as Client Services, Middle Office, Project Management, and Execution Trading. James is currently the Chair of the FIA Asia Clearing Committee, and is a prior holder of the same post in Europe.

Jérôme is the Deputy Head for the SunGard Post Trade Services Product Line since beginning of 2009. He had been holding the position of Senior Product Marketing Manager for Post-Trade Derivatives for one year prior to the acquisition of GL Trade by SunGard. Between 1996 and 2005, Jérôme worked for the major back-office provider ATSM (then renamed Ubitrade) where he served as Senior Pre-Sales then as Sales Manager for Southern Europe and finally opened the US subsidiary in Chicago as Chief Operating Officer for the back-office system Ubix. Prior to joining ATSM, Jérôme had started his carrier in the IT Group of the Matif before working for one of the exchange subsidiary, Maestro, successively as Project Manager , Head of Support and Head of Sales.

For 20 years, Jérôme has acquired a strong experience by occupying various managing functions in the IT services for the Listed Derivatives business.

Steve Ryan is Asia Regional Head of F&O Operations at RBS. He has over 17 years experience in the finance industry including roles within Project Management, Business Process Reengineering and Client Services at Deutsche Bank, ICAP, Sumitomo Finance and the Bank of England. Steve is currently the current Vice Chair of the FIA Asia Clearing Committee.

Mr Tan leads the product development, clearing house and technology departments for the Singapore Commodity Exchange Limited (SICOM), a company of the Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX).

Mr Tan joined SICOM in April 2007. He was previously Vice President, Clearing and Commodities in SGX, in charge of the development and implementation of SGX AsiaClear® – SGX’s over-the-counter (OTC) clearing business and facility for energy and freight derivatives, and the only OTC clearing platform in Asia. In recognition of SGX AsiaClear’s contribution to the OTC energy derivatives market, SGX was named Exchange of the Year, Asia 2007 by Energy Risk, an important publication for the energy industry.

In his previous assignments with SGX, Mr Tan had also headed its Strategy and Business Development department and was with its Corporate Strategy function. Prior to SGX, Mr Tan was an associate director with Standard & Poor’s (S&P) credit rating agency as the primary analyst of the financial institutions portfolio for S&P in Malaysia. He was also involved with the analysis of the financial institutions in Thailand and Indonesia.

Mr Tan is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He graduated with an Honours Degree in Biochemistry from the National University of Singapore in 1987 and has also completed the Executive Development Programme with the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.