Prof. Krzysztof Jajuga

President of CFA Society Poland

President of CFA Society Poland, Professor of Economic Sciences at Wroclaw University of Economics (title given by the President of Poland in 1992), Head of Finance Management Institute. He is member in scientific and professional organizations: Member of Executive Board of Committee of Statistics and Econometrics of Polish Academy of Sciences, Member of Executive Board of Committee of Financial Sciences of Polish Academy of Sciences , Member of Executive Board of Committee of Economic Sciences of Polish Academy of Sciences. His research interests are: financial markets and instruments, risk management, corporate finance, real estate, insurance and quantitative methods (econometrics, statistics).He was a member of the Scientific Council of the National Bank of Poland and a member of the Supervisory Board of Warsaw Stock Exchange.

Arvind Ramakrishnan

Director, Sovereigns and Supernationals

Fitch Ratings

Arvind is a Director at Fitch Ratings, in their Emerging Europe sovereign team, based in Frankfurt, Germany. He is the primary credit analyst on a number of central and eastern European sovereign credits, including Poland. Arvind joined Fitch from Goldman Sachs, where he was the head of the Sovereign Credit Research Group within Credit Risk Management, based in Singapore.

Prior to that, he worked as a political risk analyst in the UK, at Verisk Maplecroft and Exclusive Analysis (now part of IHS). Arvind started his career as a television journalist in India, working with CNBC and CNN-IBN. He has a Master’s degree in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics, and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Mass Communication, and a Bachelor of Engineering from universities in India.

John Hulsman

Political economy expert, columnist at City AM

War game facilitator

Dr John Hulsman is a former Washington DC insider now based in Europe, where he runs a leading political risk consulting firm (www.john-hulsman.com) concentrating on game-changing foreign and macro-economic policy issues for business, investors and governments alike.

An outstanding and practiced speaker, John has given more than 1,310 high level briefings at the invitation of the US Department of State, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the CIA, the House International Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and governments around the world. John is also a widely read Senior Columnist at CityAM, the newspaper of the city of London, writing prolifically on foreign affairs and political risk. His articles can be found here: http://www.cityam.com/profile/john-hulsman.

Building on his Washington experience, he is a cutting-edge facilitator of war games, a powerful analytical tool. These are simulated exercises played by well-briefed individuals to test assumptions and illuminate a range of likely foreign policy outcomes that will constitute the real world conditions that must be mastered in the times ahead. John has designed, played and facilitated over 100 war games for blue chip private sector banking and hedge fund clients as well as governments around the world.

Previously, John has served as Senior Research Fellow in think tanks in Washington, Germany and Holland. A life member of the US Council on Foreign Relations, the pre-eminent global foreign policy institution, he has written over 720 articles, participated in over 1540 interviews, and given over 530 speeches on foreign affairs topics around the world. His last four books (“To Dare More Boldly: The Audacious Story of Political Risk”, “To Begin the World Over Again,” a biography of Lawrence of Arabia, “The Godfather Doctrine,” and “Ethical Realism”) have all been international best sellers

Ignacy Morawski

Economist

Founder of SpotData.pl 

Ignacy Morawski is one of the best-known market economists. His background includes work in a banking sector (WestLB, Polski Bank Przedsiębiorczości), where he was chief economist ressponsible for microeconomic analyses. In the years 2012-16 he was noted in many forecasting rankings and was recognised among top three best macroeconomic analysts twice according to the National Bank of Poland and "Rzeczpospolita" daily. He was also part of the macroeconomic forecasting task force in the Polish Academy of Sciences and part of WiseEuropa think tank. Ignacy started his career as a financial journalist in "Rzeczpospolita". He graduated with a degree in economics at Bocconi University in Milano and political sciences at Warsaw University. 

Michael Falk, CFA

Partner

Focus Consulting Group

Michael Falk, CFA, CRC is a partner at the Focus Consulting Group and specializes in helping investment/wealth management teams improve their investment decision-making, and their firms with strategic planning and succession. Previously, he was a chief strategist at global macro L.P., and a chief investment officer in charge of manager due diligence and asset allocation for a multi-billion-dollar advisory practice. 

Michael is a frequent speaker and presenter. He is part of the CFA Institute’s Approved Speaker List. In the past, he has taught on behalf of the CFA Society of Chicago in their Investment Foundations Certificate program, been a contributing member in the Financial Management Association’s (FMA) practitioner demand driven academic research initiative (PDDARI) group and taught at DePaul University in their Certified Financial Planner (CFP) Certificate Program.  He is frequently quoted in the financial press and presents at industry events. In 2016, the CFA Institute Research Foundation published Michael’s Monograph “Let’s All Learn How To Fish… To Sustain Long-Term Economic Growth.” Michael also co-authored the 2017 book “Money, Meaning and Mindsets.”

Prof. Eugeniusz Gatnar

Member

Monetary Policy Council

Professor of Economics, graduate of the Faculty of Management of the Academy of Economics in Katowice (currently the University of Economics). His career is connected with this university, where he is head of the Department of Business and Financial Analysis in the Faculty of Finance and Insurance.

He specialises in the application of econometric methods and statistical financial analysis. He has authored over 170 scientific papers, textbooks, scientific monographs, and articles. 

He has had numerous academic internships abroad, including in École Supérieure de Commerce in Toulouse, the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, the University of Cambridge and the Arnhem Business School. He has also given lectures on financial data analysis at the University of Central Switzerland in Lucerne.

In 2007-2010, he was an adviser to the President of Narodowy Bank Polski, then in 2010-2016 he was a Member of the Management Board of Narodowy Bank Polski.

On 13 January 2016, the Senate of the Republic of Poland appointed Prof. Eugeniusz Gatnar to the Monetary Policy Council.

Malcolm White, CFA

Vice-President, Portfolio Management and Portfolio Manager

Signature Global Asset Management

Malcolm White, Vice-President, Portfolio Management and Portfolio Manager, specializes in the technology, media and telecommunications sectors. Starting his career as a software developer, Mr. White has over 21 years of investment experience. He has consistently been voted as one of Canada’s top 50 money managers in the Brendan Wood survey. The Fund Malcolm manages won the Lipper award in 2017 as the best Global Equity Fund in Canada in the 3, 5 and 10-year categories. He recently completed a part-time program in artificial intelligence at a local Toronto university, where, for his capstone project he created a machine-learning application that reads financial transcripts and automatically determines investor sentiment. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Queen’s University.