Michael Arone, CFA
Chief Investment Strategist, US SPDR Business, State Street Global Advisors
Michael is the Chief Investment Strategist for the SPDR® Americas Business at State Street Global Advisors. He is responsible for expanding State Street Global Advisors’ footprint and thought leadership effort through frequent contributions to the financial news media, speaking engagements and client interactions. Michael is a highly regarded speaker at industry conferences and is the author of several articles related to investment management practices. He is a member of the firm’s Senior Leadership Team.
During his more than 20-year career as an investment professional, Michael has served as State Street Global Advisors’ Global and EMEA Head of Portfolio Strategy as well as a senior portfolio manager in the Global Active Quantitative Equity Group. He has substantial experience developing long-only and long-short quantitative strategies and managing investment portfolios using quantitative disciplines. Michael has worked extensively with the firm’s global institutional and intermediary clients to help them identify investment solutions that enable them to meet their long-term financial goals.
Michael holds a BS in Finance from Bentley College. He has earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and is a member of the Boston Security Analysts Society and CFA Institute.
Gunjan Chauhan
Global Head of SPDR Capital Markets, State Street Global Advisors
Gunjan is a Senior Managing Director at State Street Global Advisors, Global Head of Capital Markets for the SPDR ETF Business and a member of SSGA's Senior Leadership Team.
Against a backdrop where SPDR ETFs represent 12% of all trading volume on US stock exchanges and make up nearly half of all US-listed ETF trading volume, Gunjan is responsible for defining and leading the strategic direction of our Capital Markets business globally. With team members on the ground in New York, London and Hong Kong, Gunjan is focused on optimising the ETF ecosystem and delivering our Liquidity promise to some of the world's most complex and sophisticated investors.
Clients at the epicentre of what this team does and Gunjan and team work in partnership with investors, market-makers, broker-dealers and technology providers to advise clients on access to liquidity or the relative value of ETFs against other financial instruments.
Prior to running the Capital Markets group, Gunjan was Head of SSGA's Cash Business EMEA & APAC, part of a global team running cash investments totaling $350bn for corporate and institutional clients including hedge- and sovereign wealth funds. In this role she was responsible for all client-facing activities including sales, strategy, operations and services on behalf of the firm's cash management in EMEA & APAC.
Before joining SSGA, Gunjan was at the Royal Bank of Scotland, where she served in a variety of client-facing roles over the course of the past 10 years, which include Prime Brokerage and Structured Credit.
Most recently she was the EMEA Head of Credit & Treasury Markets. In this role, she was responsible for leading a team, primarily focused on financial institutions and corporate clients investing in short duration fixed income products in both the secured and unsecured space. A passionate believer in mentoring, Gunjan is a Professional Mentor at Cass Business School, as well as supporting mentees as part of The Brokerages Momentum programme, a unique cross-firm mentoring scheme designed to foster the advancement of female leadership talent and create impact with undergraduate women aiming for a future career in the banking industry.
Gunjan graduated with her B.A (hons) in 2003 from University College London and earned her MBA from Cass Business School in 2013.
Chris Concannon
Director, President and Chief Operating Officer, MarketAxess
Chris Concannon has been the President and Chief Operating Officer of MarketAxess since January 2019. In this role Mr. Concannon oversees day-to-day operations, corporate development, long-term technology strategy and global data strategy for MarketAxess globally.
Mr. Concannon was most recently the President and Chief Operating Officer of Cboe Global Markets Inc, where he was responsible for Cboe’s transaction business, invluding Global Derivatives, U.S. and European Equities, and Global Foreign Exchange – as well as overseeing the company’s Technology, Operations, Risk, and Marketing divisions. Prior to his role at the Cboe, Mr. Concannon was the Chief Executive Officer of Bats Global Markets, where he led the company’s initial public offering in 2016, as well as its acquisition by the Cboe in February 2017.
Mr. Concannon has more than 20 years of experience as an executive at Nasdaq, Virtu Financial, Instinet and as an attorney at Morgan Lewis and Bockius and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He holds a B.A. from Catholic University, an M.B.A. from St. John’s University and a J.D. from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law.
Hilary Corman Kirsch
Head of US Institutional for SPDR ETFs, State Street Global Advisors
Hilary Corman Kirsch, Managing Director, is the Head of US Institutional for SPDR ETFs at State Street Global Advisors. The channel includes Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Family Offices, Pensions, Foundations, Endowments, and OCIO/Consultants. Previously she was Interim Co-Head of Institutional at BlackRock for iShares. At BlackRock she began at the firm in 2013 as Co-Head of the Asset Manager/ETF Strategist/Hedge Fund & Family Office channel in iShares. In 2014 she became Head of the channel and in 2016 was asked to be interim Co-Head of the Institutional Business. Before joining BlackRock she was a Senior Managing Director in charge of US Equity Sales at Guggenheim Securities. Prior to being recruited by Guggenheim, Ms. Corman Kirsch was the North American Regional Head of Equity Sales at Markit NA, a financial data and Technology Company. At Markit NA, Ms. Corman Kirsch was key to developing and selling a premier ETF solutions product as well as building the Equity business for the firm. Prior to that, Mrs. Corman Kirsch was a Managing Director at Bank of America Securities where she ran a northeast sales team until she was promoted to Senior Relationship Manager in 2007. Prior to Bank of America, Ms. Corman Kirsch worked in both New York and London for Citigroup and JP Morgan in Global Equities in both Sales and Management capacities. Ms. Corman Kirsch was named one of the 50 most influential women in Private Wealth in 2016.
Ms. Corman Kirsch holds a BSBA from Georgetown University in Finance and International Business and an MBA from Columbia Business School in Finance and Accounting
Amy Hong
Head of Market Structure Strategy, Global Markets Division, Goldman Sachs
Amy is head of Market Structure Strategy for the Global Markets Division, responsible for cross-asset strategic business development efforts for the division. Her areas of focus include market infrastructures, systemic and operational risks and industry digitization. Amy also oversees the Global Markets Division Strategic Partnerships Program, responsible for managing key industry relationships. She is a member of the Clearinghouse Risk Council and the Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC Fixed Income Best Execution Subcommittee. Amy leads the Global Markets Division's Women in Trading program and was previously co-head of the Global Markets Division's Women’s Network.
Earlier in her career, Amy was in Global Credit Trading. She joined Goldman Sachs in 2006 as an analyst in the Investment Banking Division and was named managing director in 2017.
Amy serves on the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Global Markets Advisory Committee, the boards of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), and ICE Clear Credit, and the risk committees of ICE Clear Credit and ICE Clear Europe on behalf of the firm.
Amy earned a BA in Political Science and International Relations from Bucknell University and an MBA from Columbia University, and was awarded the George E. Doty Global Master’s Degree Fellowship.
Dr. Lawrence H. Summers
Former Secretary of the Treasury
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers is one of America's leading economists. In addition to serving as 71st Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, Dr. Summers served as Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration, as President of Harvard University, and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank.
Dr. Summers’ tenure at the U.S. Treasury coincided with the longest period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history. He is the only Treasury Secretary in the last half century to have left office with the national budget in surplus.
Dr. Summers has played a key role in addressing every major financial crisis for the last two decades. During the 1990s, he was a leader in crafting the U.S. response to international financial crises arising in Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Japan, and Asian emerging markets. As one of President Obama’s chief economic advisors, Dr. Summers’ thinking helped shape the U.S. response to the 2008 financial crisis, to the failure of the automobile industry, and to the pressures on the European monetary system. Upon Summers’ departure from the White House, President Obama said, “I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry’s brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team.”
The Economist recognized his influence when it defined the “Summers Doctrine,” an approach to economic policy during financial crises that fuses a microeconomic "laissez faire" mentality with macroeconomic activism. "Markets should allocate capital, labour and ideas without interference, but sometimes markets go haywire, and must be counteracted forcefully by government."
Summers' five years as President of Harvard represented a time of major innovation for the University. He focused on equality of opportunity and removing all financial obligation from students with family incomes below $60,000 a year. He launched a major effort to make Boston, and Cambridge in particular, the global leader in life sciences research, with the formation of major programs for stem cell research and genomics. Perhaps most importantly, he led efforts to renew Harvard College with dramatic increases in study abroad programs, faculty-student contact, and collaboration across the University during his tenure.
Currently, Dr. Summers is the President Emeritus and the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University, where he became a full professor at age 28, one of the youngest in Harvard’s recent history. He directs the University’s Mossavar-Rhomani Center for Business and Government. Summers was the first social scientist to receive the National Science Foundation's Alan Waterman Award for scientific achievement and, in 1993, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given to the most outstanding economist under 40 in the United States. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. He has published several books and more than 150 papers in scholarly journals.
Summers is an advisor to businesses and investors. He serves on the board of two cutting edge financial services startups—Square and Lending Club. He also chairs the boards of Citizen Schools and the Center for Global Development and serves on the executive committee of the board for Teach for America. He recently chaired the Commission on Global Health, lauded by the UN Secretary General who noted that it “will bring more than health – it will bring equity, and contribute to a life of dignity for all.”
President Bill Clinton said that Larry Summers "has the rare ability to see the world that is taking shape and the skill to help to bring it into being." He has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential thinkers by Time, Foreign Policy, Prospect and The Economist magazines among many others. In his speeches, regular newspaper columns in The Financial Times and public commentary, he continues to move forward the debate on national and global economic policy.
Kevin Warsh
Distinguished Visiting Fellow of Economics, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; former Governor of Federal Reserve System
Kevin Warsh serves as the Shepard Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
He advises several private and public companies, including service on the board of directors of UPS. Warsh is also a member of the Group of Thirty (G30).
Warsh conducts extensive research in the field of economics and finance. He issued an independent report to the Bank of England proposing reforms in the conduct of monetary policy in the United Kingdom. Parliament recently adopted the report’s recommendations.
Governor Warsh served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 until 2011. Warsh served as the Federal Reserve's representative to the Group of Twenty (G-20) and as the Board's emissary to the emerging and advanced economies in Asia. In addition, he was Administrative Governor, managing and overseeing the Board's operations, personnel, and financial performance.
Prior to his appointment to the Board, from 2002 until 2006, Warsh served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Executive Secretary of the White House National Economic Council. Previously, Warsh was a member of the Mergers & Acquisitions department at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York, serving as Vice President and Executive Director.
Warsh received his A.B. from Stanford University, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.