2020 Women in Finance Asia

CEO of the Year Azila Abdul Aziz, Kenanga Futures

Excellence in Leadership Nellie Dagdag, DTCC

Individual Achievement Lauren Degney, Citi

Crystal Ladder Jessica Morrison, Morgan Stanley

Trailblazer Carrie Cheung, BNP Paribas

Excellence in Sell-Side Trading Josephine Kim, BAML

Excellence in Buy-Side Trading Christine To, T Rowe Price

Best in Trading Platforms Shilesh Shekhawat, Virtu Financial

Excellence in Fintech Lisa O’Connor, SWIFT

Excellence in Asset Management Belinda Boa, BlackRock

Rising Stars

Nicola McGreal, State Street Global Advisors

Sandy Ngai, AllianceBernstein

Vivian Peng, JP Morgan Asset Management

Lily Xiong, BlackRock

Ms Azila Abdul Aziz, is Chief Executive Officer / Executive Director & Head of Listed Derivatives at Kenanga Futures Sdn Bhd, a Listed Derivatives Brokerage Company based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Azila has been with company for more than 18 years and from the year 2012, she serves as the CEO. An accomplished Executive equipped with leadership, management and entrepreneurship & intraprenuership capabilities. Azila currently leads the overall running of the Listed Derivatives Broking Company that includes both in-bound & out-bound businesses overseeing the entire Front Office Sales to Back Office Operations. She sits on the Board of Kenanga Futures Sdn Bhd as an Executive Director, an appointed member of Senior Management Team for the Group Executive Committee and a member of several other committees within the Kenanga Group. Prior to joining Kenanga Futures Sdn Bhd, Azila held the position of Institutional Sales at RHB Securities Sdn Bhd from 1996 - 2000. She was involved in sales role for both regional equities and futures markets with clientele base includes international institutions, banks, global hedge funds, domestic institutions, state funds and various asset management companies.

Azila holds a Bachelor’s Degree (Hons) in Finance and a Diploma in Investment Analysis from Malaysia’s MARA University of Technology (UiTM). In addition to her present role in the company, Azila has diverse industrial participation where she has been appointed for various roles: President of Malaysia Futures Brokers’ Association (MFBA), Member on the FTSE Russell Bursa Malaysia Index Advisory Committee, Member of the Market Participants Committee (MPC), Principal Representative of the Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Advisory Group, Committee member of the task force for Professional Certificate Investment and Finance (PCIF) program developed by PNB Investment Institute Sdn Bhd (PNBI/I) and an Associate Member of Palm Oil Refiners’ Association of Malaysia (PORAM).

Managing Director, Head of iShares, Asia Pacific Susan Chan, Managing Director, is the Head of iShares and Index Investing Asia Pacific. She is a member of the BlackRock Asia-Pacific Executive Committee and the BlackRock Global Operating Committee. Ms. Chan joined BlackRock in July 2013 as head of Asia Pacific iShares Capital Markets and Products.

Prior to joining BlackRock, she was a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank AG, Hong Kong where she was Head of Equity Structuring, Strategic Equity Transactions and DBx Asia Pacific. Before Deutsche Bank, she was Managing Director at Barclays Capital Asia Limited where she held various positions in equity derivatives with the most recent as Head of Equity and Funds Structured, Asia Pacific. She was also a member of the Global EFS Executive Committee, the Asia Pacific Structuring Executive Committee, Founder and Executive Sponsor for the Women's Internal Network, Asia Pacific and a Board Member of Barclays Capital Hong Kong Limited. Ms Chan is a graduate of Boston University, Boston, MA.

Ms. Carrie Cheung is currently Head of Electronic Trading, Equity Cash Asia Pacific, Global Markets, BNP Paribas. Carrie is leading the development of BNP Paribas algorithm, DMA and program trading business.

Carrie joined BNP Paribas in 2013 from J.P. Morgan where she was responsible for the sales and marketing of the prime DMA platform. Prior to that, she has worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Japan for 11 years. In her last capacity as Head of Electronic Trading, Carrie was instrumental in building out the equity trading platform and electronic business in the region.

Carrie comes with a diversify culture, worked in multiple locations in Asia, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan.

She is the first female and foreigner co-chair of FPL(FIX Protocol Limited) Japan, which is one of the leading industrial organization for finance, particular in electronic trading.

Carrie majored in computer science and holds a Bachelor’s degree from Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Andrea Fletcher is the Chief Operating Officer for the APAC region

Andrea has been based in London, Sydney and Hong Kong and has worked extensively with the US, Europe and across Asia. She joined the Investment Banking industry in London in 1994 as a graduate and moved into European Equity Sales before re-locating to Sydney in an Equity Sales role in 1998. Andrea joined Citi in 1999 and worked on the Australian Equity Sales desk in Sydney from 1999 until 2007 before taking on the role to run the Australian Markets Client Management team. In 2010 she moved to the Asia region to head the Markets Client Management team for Pan Asia. In 2015 she took on a newly created role as the Global Head of Client Strategy for Equities and Prime Finance spearheading the Equities Sales strategy to help drive Citi’s global growth strategy in Equities. In March 2020 Andrea moved to a cross franchise role by taking on another newly created role as Chief Operating Officer for the APAC region as part of which Andrea will help drive Citi’s efforts to grow the regional franchise.

Throughout her career Andrea has been a keen supporter of diversity in the workplace and involved in mentoring and leadership programmes. Andrea was the co-chair of the Citi Women’s Network in Sydney in 2009 and a foundation member of “Females in the Finance Industry’ – fundraising in Sydney. Andrea helped to establish the Citi Women’s network in Hong Kong in 2014 where she was co-chair from 2014 – 2015 and remains a key supporter of that group.

Andrea received a BA in French and Business from the University of Loughborough and has two daughters aged 15 and 13 years.

Nasrine Ghozali re-joined Oasis as Chief Risk Officer & Member of the Strategies Group in February 2016 and is based in Hong Kong. She was previously a Convertible Bonds Strategist and Equity Derivatives Trader for Oasis between January 2006 and March 2010. Prior to re-joining Oasis, Ms. Ghozali co-founded Silver Tree, an Asia-focused event driven hedge fund, in June 2010, and served as Principal Portfolio Manager and Responsible Officer until January 2016. Prior to joining Oasis, she was Co-Head of Convertible Bond Arbitrage at Natexis Arbitrage, Group Banques Populaires in Paris from August 2001 to December 2005. Before that, she was a Convertible Bond Trader with BNP Paribas Arbitrage in Paris between August 2000 and August 2001. Ms. Ghozali received a Master of International Finance & Economics, a Master of Economics majoring in Bank Finance Insurance, and a Bachelor of Economics majoring in Applied Economics from University Paris IX-Dauphine. Ms. Ghozali co-founded the Board Diversity Hong Kong Investors’ Initiative, which aims to improve gender diversity on boards of Hong Kong-listed companies, and she is a member of the steering committee of the 30% Club Hong Kong Chapter and of the investor group of the 30% Club Japan Chapter.

Joel Hurewitz is Managing Director, Head of Sales & Global Head of Broker Dealer Strategy and Product Development for Instinet. He is responsible for sales of the group to buy and sell side clients across the Asia Pacific Region as well as the broker dealer strategy globally. Joel joined Instinet in 2008 to run broker dealer sales, but in the course of his 8 years with the firm has held a number of positions including Head of Product Strategy and Head of Electronic Trading.

With over 20 years equities experience in Asia, Mr. Hurewitz has been an active member, pioneer, and supporter of FIX Trading Community since the early days of electronic trading in Asia.

Prior to joining Instinet, Joel held roles within Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and CLSA where he built electronic businesses, products, and teams.

Josephine J Kim currently runs Equity Execution Sales team in Asia Pacific.

She joined Bank of America in July 2010 and sent to Singapore with a mandate to grow electronic trading business in South Asia and set up the operation in Singapore. Under her leadership, just after 2 years, the firm ranked from nowhere to #1 in Execution consulting and sales by one of the major surveys.

Starting from late 2016, she was relocated back from Singapore to Hong Kong to head up Electronic Trading Sales team for Asia Pacific region. In 2019, she then took an expanded role to head Asia Execution Sales team being responsible for High touch, Program and Electronic Execution Sales effort. In addition to the day to day senior management engagement, Josephine is spending significant time with the head traders and quant teams around execution consulting, TCA analysis, quant studies and market structure discussion. She also runs the regional BofAML client events and trading conferences throughout Asia to promote BofA’s thought leadership. Josephine also writes industry opinion, interviews with the industry media and magazines and she has been an active speaker at the external conferences.

Her passion is also on the D&I side where Josephine sits in Asia D&I Council Committee and Co-chair APAC Global Markets Women’s Leadership Council(WLC) at Bank of America. Externally, she sits on Women in Finance Asia advisory board where she actively promotes and nurtures top female talents for the industry. She won the Excellence in Sell-Side Trading Award at the inaugural Women in Finance Asia Awards in 2019. She also has her greatest passion on charity work where she actually went through 3 rounds of amateur boxing match at the White Collar Boxing and won a trophy for charity.

She has Economics undergradugate degree from Royal Holloway, University of London, UK and a Master degree in Finance & Accounting at CASS Business School, London, UK

Nicole Kim is Vice President, leading sales for Credit Suisse’s Advanced Execution Services(AES) team in ASEAN. Based in Singapore, Nicole has over 10 years of experience in APAC equities markets and is currently responsible for algorithmic trading sales in cash equities, multi-asset and quantitative trading products at Credit Suisse’s ASEAN region. Previously, Nicole has worked as a high touch sales trader in Korea for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Nicole holds a degree in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Jacqueline Loh PhD, leads the trading team at AIA Investment Management. In her previous role as Head of Trading- Asia at Schroders Management Investment Singapore, she was a proponent of the use of electronic trading across all asset classes to increase efficiency and transparency.

Her interests include derivatives, quantitative analytics of market trends, big data and artificial intelligence.

Jacqueline graduated with a BSc Immunology, London and MBA Finance from Cass Business School, London.

In June 2020, Jessica joined global financial technology firm, Virtu Financial APAC, currently under transition following the 2019 acquisition of ITG. Virtu uses advanced technology and transparency to deliver liquidity to the global capital markets and help clients pursue best execution in a scalable, efficient and data-driven manner.

Jessica offers an extensive background in APAC market structure, having moved to Hong Kong in 2011. She is an active participant in several industry initiatives around the development of the A Share Market Structure in China through Hong Kong Stock Connect, IOI and FIX protocols, and Electronic Trading guidelines. While running Virtu’s APAC Execution Services team on a day-to-day basis, Jessica continues to track developments and publish market structure content with regards to both macro market structure such as regulation, technology and explicit costs, and their impact on the micro structure liquidity indicators such as volume, volatility and implicit costs in the region.

Prior to Virtu, Jessica held the position of Head of Execution Services Sales for Asia at the Institutional Equities Division of Morgan Stanley from 2017-2020, having originally worked in their London Compliance team from 2006-2009. Between those dates, Jessica worked for Deutsche Bank initially in an Equities Compliance role before transitioning to and establishing the APAC Market Structure and Commission Management team in Hong Kong in 2011.

Jessica holds a MA in Law from the University of Cambridge.

Vivian Peng, Executive Director, J.P. Morgan Asset Management

Vivian Peng, specializes in systematic and quant driven trading on APAC equity trading desk at JP Morgan Asset Management. Vivian Peng joined the APAC equity trading desk at JP Morgan Asset Management in year 2016 and is responsible for automation and establish quant driven trading on JPM’s Hong Kong desk. Vivian started her career working in Lehman’s equity division in New York. Subsequently, she moved to Hong Kong and joined Barclays Asia where she spent five years to buildout their electronic trading business across APAC markets. She then joined JPM investment bank to work on their equities algorithmic product and electronic sales trading before moved into JPM Asset Management world. Vivian studied in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics and Statistics.

Head of Asia Electronic Trading, Cash Equities, Macquarie

Stuart is Head of Asia Electronic Trading at Macquarie, based in Hong Kong. He was previously Executive Director JP Morgan in Hong Kong and Head of European Electronic Trading at RBC in LONDON. He drove the internal discussions for THOR to Europe and oversaw the build, release and distribution to clients. In that role he spent significant time in the US and Canada advising clients on European execution. He is an “A” Director of FIX Protocol Limited and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Trading. Stuart served on the AFME Securities Committee for three years and was a founding Quorum 15 Board member in Australia (2011) as well as being a long term Q15 member in London (2008). Stuart holds an undergrad from Southampton University (UK), two Masters degrees, one from Durham University (UK) and one from the London School of Economics (UK), with majors in decision sciences, information technology, innovation and technology. He holds the ACE from MIT Sloan in Innovation and Technology Management and is enrolled and will be attending the Class of 2020/2021 SEP at Stanford Graduate Business School.

Emma Quinn
Global Co-Head of Equity Trading
AllianceBernstein

Emma Quinn was appointed Global Co-Head of Equity Trading in October 2014. Previously, she was Head of Asia Pacific Trading from 2011. Before that she was Head of Asia Pacific Fixed Income and Australia Equities Trading from 2010, and Head of Trading for Australia and New Zealand from 2009. Quinn joined the firm in 2001 as a senior trader. Prior to joining AllianceBernstein she worked as an equity trader at AMP Henderson Global Investors. Quinn holds a BBus in finance and law from the University of Technology, Sydney. She was Co-Chair of the Asia Pacific Regional Committee and is currently a Director of FIX Trading Community.

Managing Director
Global Client Development
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd (“HKEX”)

Mr. Kevin Rideout joined HKEX in April 2015 as Head of the Global Client Development. He is principally responsible for the International and Mainland client relationship management and marketing services.

Mr. Rideout joined HKEX from Citigroup Global Markets where he served 5 years as Head of Wholesale Execution Services Asia. He was also Chief spokesman on the implementation of Stock Connect program launched by HKEX. Prior to this he was Global Head of Market Infrastructures based in London for 5 years where he led a global team to harness commercial arrangements with stock exchanges, clearing houses and depositories around the world. In addition he founded and led a new business group for Citigroup in clearing HFT/Prop trading business.

Prior to joining Citi, Mr Rideout spent 10 years at Thomson Reuters. He held various positions in Thomson Reuters, including Regional Manager Hong Kong, Regional Director Japan and Korea, Managing Director Asia in Singapore and Managing Director - Global Head of Relationship Management and Sales in London for the Omgeo (DTCC) Division. Mr Rideout holds a Bsc (Hons) Environmental Chemistry from the University of Hertfordshire UK.

Head of Execution Services Sales, Morgan Stanley Asia

Malavika currently leads the Execution Services Sales team for Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, which encompasses Equities & Listed Derivatives. In the role, Malavika is responsible for execution consulting with clients and represents the firm on industry bodies to advocate for key market structure changes across the region. Malavika has over 12 years of experience in Equities - having held a number of roles as APAC Head of Distribution, Product Manager & COO at both Societe Generale & JP Morgan prior to joining Morgan Stanley. Malavika holds a Masters in International Affairs from Hong Kong University & a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Singapore Management University.