Hedge fund roundtable Participants

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Eleonore Dachicourt joined Credit Suisse Private Banking in June 2005 as head of hedge fund advisory. Before joining Credit Suisse she was a senior hedge fund manager at Barclays where she successfully managed the three in-house discretionary hedge fund portfolios for Barclays Private Bank globally (with assets under management of about £600 million). She began her hedge fund career at UBS Wealth Management in London.

David Escoffier is head of equity derivatives for the UK and northern Europe at SG Corporate and Investment Banking. He is a graduate of Institut d'Etudes Politiques and began his equity derivatives career 10 years ago at Crédit Lyonnais in Paris, before moving to London to create the bank's UK sales desk and then head sales in New York. Until his appointment in London, David was head of distribution for the Americas at SG Cowen in New York.

Christopher Fawcett co-founded Fauchier Partners in 1994, before which he worked for five years with Euris, a large French investment holding company.  He gained experience of the securities industry with Morgan Grenfell, with Industrial Technology Securities, a venture capital company of which he was co-founder, and with the Duménil Group. He has an MA in Law from Oxford University, an MBA from INSEAD and is a qualified chartered accountant.

Richard Ho: Richard Ho is a managing director and head of fund-linked derivatives at Barclays Capital. He is responsible for the trading and structuring of derivative products linked to all managed strategies, including mutual funds & hedge funds. Prior to joining Barclays Capital in 2000, he was the head of hedge funds investment products at BNP Paribas Asset Management, where he worked since 1994. Before that, he worked as a CTA and derivatives analyst at Lazard Brothers.

Robert Howie is a senior consultant in Mercer's investment consulting practice in London, where he advises institutional investors, particularly on investment strategy and the use of hedge funds. He chairs Mercer's Hedge Fund Research Group in Europe. He has nearly 10 years' experience in financial services, previously working for Barclays Life in London and African Life in South Africa.He has a bachelor of business science from the University of Cape Town and is a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in the UK.

Guy Ingram is head of hedge fund advisory Services at Albourne Partners, which he co-founded in 1994.  Albourne advises investors on hedge fund portfolios. He previously executed hedge fund strategies using various sophisticated quantitative techniques.  He has a degree in economics and politics from the University of Bristol.

Omar Kodmani is senior executive officer, Permal Investment Management Services. He joined Permal in 2000, and is responsible for reviewing and monitoring Permal's international investment and asset gathering initiatives. Previously, he was with Scudder Investments for seven years and Equitable Capital for four years. He has an MBA from New York University and a BA in economics from Columbia University.

James Walsh is executive director, economics and strategy at Hermes Investment Management. He has been at Hermes since 1995, and has been responsible for the economics and strategy Department since 2001. His responsibilities include advising clients of Hermes on strategic asset allocation, risk budgeting and other asset class decisions. He has headed the project to implement an initial £540 million hedge funds for the BT Pension Scheme.  He has degrees in economics from Brunel and London universities.