Leading the Way in Global Banking
We are market-leading experts in optimising our client’s balance sheet, reducing the total cost of trading and enabling regulatory compliance.
We work with leading investment banks, major clearing houses and exchanges, as well as with leading asset managers and insurers.
Based in the City of London, over the past 20 years we have delivered in 28 financial centres worldwide.
Specialists in Clearing, Risk, and Regulation
We are particularly regarded as world-leading specialists in Clearing, Risk and Regulation.
Expert Team Leadership and Experience
Our Clearing, Risk and Regulatory team is led by:
- Christian Lee, who is acknowledged as a world-leading authority on risk, with in-depth specialist knowledge of OTC clearing and experience in a variety of risk management roles and specialisms, including market and credit risk, financial markets, middle office and regulatory matters. He has over 25 years’ experience in financial markets. He began his career as a Chartered Accountant and, as Head of Risk at LCH, managed the Lehman’s default: the biggest market-shaping event of recent times.
Christian has created a market-leading team of fellow experts in their respective fields including
- Stephen Loosley who was alsoa key participant in the largest OTC default in history – Lehman Brothers. He designed and implemented the approach to tenor basis measurement and the market leading OIS discounting solution. He joined LCH SwapClear as an analyst and left as head of SwapClear’s middle office, running risk and operations for $300tr of IRS swaps across 50 banks. He was lead SME on Tokyo Stock Exchange’s OTC IRS clearing project. He now leads high profile international engagements with teams spanning the globe to deliver specialist OTC clearing, risk and regulatory work.
- Tom Lodge is a leading expert in OTC clearing and swap compressions, with experience spanning investment banking experience spanning product control, finance and trading. He has a thorough understanding of front to back OTC clearing and the delivery of both tactical solutions to hit market deadlines and robust, scalable solutions for the long term. He previously worked for a major bank, where he ensured operational readiness around OTC Rates Clearing, driving innovation, representing the bank in the industry and also leading teams responsible for the change book of work for rates client clearing, dealer clearing, compressions, trade affirmation platforms and connectivity.
- Damon Batten is an expert in the field of OTC derivative reform and regulation, having worked with exchanges, central counterparties and banks around the globe to understand, manage and respond to the challenge of regulatory change. He is a specialist in the European Market Infrastructure Regulation, the Dodd-Frank Act and associated CFTC rule-making, the CPSS-IOSCO principles for market infrastructures and the BCBS IOSCO standards for bank exposures to central counterparties and bilateral margining for non-centrally cleared derivatives.
- Michael Steinbeck Reeves is a sector-leading expert in the Asia markets, with a focus on CCP clearing, global regulation, risk methods and operational workflows and experience going back to the original designs of SwapClear and RepoClear. He has extensive knowledge of a broad range of markets and products, particularly of complex equity and fixed income derivatives, FX, rates, credit, repo and tri-party repo
Further information about all our services is available at www.catalyst.co.uk.
Summary of Key Specialisms
A summary of our key specialisms is given below.
- OTC Derivatives Reform: We design and launch best practice OTC clearing models; we create clearing and on-boarding strategies and client account models; we advise clients how to navigate global OTC derivatives regulation and reform and we show them how to achieve capital efficiencies through clearing; we devise and run broker selection processes; we analyse and enhance clearing models, particularly with regard to cross-margining and default waterfalls; we design clearing models for new jurisdictions including collateral, payment and settlement; we help clients understand CCP requirements and how to work effectively with regulators; we assess CCPs against the ‘Principals for Financial Markets Infrastructure’ and we identify and remediate client issues.
- Cost reduction/capital efficiency: We help clients identify, measure, and reduce all aspects of the costs of the trade lifecycle; we maximise leverage ratio efficiency by optimising the compression process; we review and rationalise legal entities and maximise the efficient use of capital and liquidity; we help clients maximise the use of their collateral and reduce the impact of their collateral and margin costs.
- Regulatory compliance: We advise clients how to exploit the opportunities, not just survive the challenge, of escalating regulation; we help clients understand regulators’ intentions, as well as the detail of regulation, and ensure our clients understand exactly what regulation applies to them (and what does not); we manage the dynamics of relationships with regulators and advise how to balance the conflicting demands of overlapping jurisdictions; we also advise regulators themselves and assist with the formulation of local regulations; we assess and understand the needs of local markets and identify options for the provision of clearing and bilateral margining; we advise on the impact of regulatory change within our clients’ business context.
- Organisational performance:Over 2,200 people have beenparticipants on our technologyleadership programmes. We help clients identify and develop their top technical talent; we coach individual technology and operations leaders, we develop leadership teams; we help clients harness the business benefits of gender balance; we devise and deliver global skills and career development programmes for high calibre engineers and for high performing technology and operations staff; we design and deliver ROI measures, success and governance models; we devise and implement management standards for large-scale programmes and projects.
