I am an experienced investment analyst specialising in financial services. I have run top ranked teams at Bank of America and its predecessors covering speciality financials (exchanges/market structure, asset managers and investment companies) and the UK Investment Trust sector. I have been a member of the Institutional Investor European Research Hall of Fame since 2019 (when only 23 people in total had qualified). I have written on fintech (looking at the digital banks’ business models, FX disruptors and deposit marketplaces) and cryptocurrencies. My piece on bitcoin et al was downloaded tens of thousands of times. I wrote part of a well read series of notes on central bank digital currency (“CBDC”) – I think the implications of CBDC are widely misunderstood, and potentially profound. I have spent a lot of time working on regulatory change. I covered the whole debate on commission unbundling (sadly, I have been proved right) as well as wholesale market reform. I wrote a widely read piece on the proposed EU financial transaction tax (this one luckily has not happened ...yet) and on fintech/CBDC regulation (“Don’t Fear the Libra”). In LinkedIn-speak, I am a skilled analyst, experienced in financial modelling and interpreting data, someone who enjoys writing (and has been known to make people laugh) and likes discussing investment ideas and presenting in public. I am especially interested in corporate strategy. The choices companies make in allocating capital to their existing businesses, to M&A and to shareholder returns go a long way towards explaining how they perform. Companies can’t choose what happens in the broader economy, but they can choose how they spend their cash. I am a Director of the Trustee body for the Bank’s UK pension scheme. I enjoy the strategic aspects of this, and have also gained a direct insight into how governance occurs in practice. I have also learned a lot about defined benefit and defined contribution pensions! Communication has always been a key part of my work. To be effective on the sell side, you need to be able to set out and defend a narrative as well as crunch numbers. Although ultimately, profits drive share prices, companies need a narrative, too, and losing control of your “equity story” tends to be costly and unnecessary.