Photos and Short Biographies of our Presenters
Mr. Rob Pringle, Director of Global IT, Gazprom Marketing & Trading
Rob Pringle is Director of Global IT for Gazprom Marketing & Trading with global responsibility for all aspects of IT delivery and operations for the organisation. Gazprom Marketing & Trading, part of the world’s largest natural gas company Gazprom, is headquartered in London and has subsidiaries in Houston, Singapore, Paris, Berlin and Manchester. It trades commodities such as natural gas, power, oil, carbon, LNG and foreign exchange and also retails energy to business consumers in the UK, France and Eire.
Rob has over 20 years of experience working in IT within the energy industry. After being sponsored by British Gas through a Business Administration and Computer Science degree, he joined them on graduation working on IT solutions for the liberalisation of the UK gas and electricity markets. Rob then moved to ABB and was responsible for marketing and developing energy retail and trading solutions for participants in the competitive energy markets. Prior to joining Gazprom Marketing & Trading, Rob spent 10 years with UK utility Centrica working in a number of different roles in the energy trading arena, and for his final four years was Head of Architecture for the Centrica Energy business unit. Rob joined Gazprom Marketing & Trading at the beginning of 2009.
Mr. Michal Skalka, Director of Trading, CEZ Group
Michal Skalka has been working for ČEZ, a. s. from 2005 as Director of Trading and member of several management committees within CEZ Group. He is responsible for all of ČEZ Group’s wholesale energy trading activities across markets of Central and Eastern Europe covering power, emissions and also coal and gas commodities. Trading activities include asset-backed trading of nuclear, lignite and hard coal assets as well as proprietary trading and sales portfolios procurement. Michal Skalka is an expert in energy and derivatives transacting, risk management, ETRM systems and settlement processes. Prior to joining ČEZ, Michal worked for the international audit and consultancy firm Deloitte as manager for ETRM services (Energy Transactions and Risk Management). First in the Management Consulting department in the Czech Republic, then in the Treasury & Capital Markets in the Netherlands and finally back in Central Europe in the Capital Markets department.
Michal gained his Engineering degree in Information Technology at the University of Economics, Faculty of Information Technology and Statistics, Prague, Czech Republic with additional study at the University of Stirling, Dept. of Computing Science, U.K.
Mr. Valter Marques, Internal Controller and Risk Manager, Metinvest International SA
With more than 10 years’ experience as Manager of the Information Systems in Commodity Trading Valter Marques has first worked for an international cotton trading company where he has gained experience in each field of this sector. He has successfully implemented the company’s CTRM Software. In 2006, Valter Marques joined Metinvest International SA, Switzerland as Manager of the Information Systems and implemented the CTRM software for their steel trading and for more than 1 year has been in charge of the company’s Risk Management leading the Internal Control and Risk Management department.
Valter Marques’ education background is engineering and commercial and he is currently finalizing his Commodity Trading Diploma from the University of Geneva.
Dr. Gary M. Vasey, MD, CommodityPoint
Dr. Gary M. Vasey is an energy industry expert noted for his industry analysis, consulting, and marketing skills. Gary currently manages UtiliPoint’s European practice from our office in the Czech Republic. With over 24-years experience in the energy and utilities industry, Gary has experienced the industry’s volatility as a geologist, consultant, software developer, analyst and marketing practitioner providing him with unique insights, not just into the entire energy value chain, but also into how to position, brand and deliver products and services to the industry. He is a noted expert on the energy trading, transaction and risk management software industry and an accomplished industry analyst and thought leader.
Gary has published more than 500 articles on energy and utility industry trends in a variety of publications, is a regular speaker at industry conferences and the co-author of the UtiliPoint expert series books ‘Trends in Energy Trading, Transaction and Risk Management Software – A Primer’ and ‘Selecting and Implementing Energy Trading, Transaction and Risk Management Software – A Primer’ . He also contributed two chapters to ‘The Professional Risk Managers‘ Guide to Energy and Environmental Markets’ published by PRMIA and two chapters, co-written with Peter C. Fusaro, to ‘Weather, Energy and Environmental Hedging – An Introduction’ (ICFAI University Press, 2007) edited by Amando F C Da Silva.
Gary is also the co-founder of the Energy Hedge Fund Center (www.energyhedgefunds.com) and the co-author of ‘Energy & Environmental Hedge Funds – The New Investment Paradigm’ (Wiley, 2006) with Peter C. Fusaro and of many trade press articles on hedge funds in the energy industry. He and Mr. Fusaro are also the joint editors of EnergyHedge, an electronic newsletter published by the Energy Hedge Fund Center.
Gary holds a B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Geological Sciences from the University of Aston in Birmingham, England and a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland.
Mr. Aviv Handler, MD. Sirius Solutions
Aviv Handler is the Managing Director of Sirius Solutions – Europe. Prior to Sirius he founded and built Coherence Consulting into a multi-practice provider of specialised consulting services to the global commodity and energy markets, focused on credit risk. Before Coherence he held a variety of senior positions in financial and energy trading technology, at organisations including Sungard, KWI, and Redshift International. Sirius Solutions, L.L.L.P. is an independent business consulting firm specialising in the areas of Financial Advisory, Business Operations, Compliance & Controls, Legal & Economic Advisory and Technology, headquartered in Houston.
Mr. Nagaraj Meda, Founder, Chairman and MD, Transgraph Consulting
Mr. Nagaraj Meda is the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of TransGraph Consulting, which renders knowledge, based consulting services in the areas of price forecasting, trading, sourcing and risk management to leading manufacturing, commodity trading, Energy, FMCG and metal companies of the world. Mr. Nagaraj Meda is masters in Economics with specialization in International trade/finance from University of Hyderabad and has professional qualifications in the fields of technical analysis and portfolio management.
Mr. Manav Garg, Founder & CEO, Eka Software Solutions
Manav Garg is the CEO & Founder of Eka Software Solutions, a leader in Commodity Trade and Risk Management (CTRM) Software. An entrepreneur and former commodity trader, Manav is the driving force behind Eka’s innovative product portfolio and is responsible for its global business strategy and growth.
Dr. Mark Earthey, Triple Point
Dr. Mark Earthey serves as Product Manager, European Gas and Power for Triple Point Technology and is responsible for managing the development roadmap for Commodity XL™, Triple Point’s leading multi-market commodity trading and enterprise risk management solution. His subject matter expertise focuses on European power, emissions, gas, and market regulation.
Before joining Triple Point, Dr. Earthey was General Manager (Europe) of the Lacima Group, responsible for the business development of Lacima’s energy risk management and asset optimisation software. He joined Lacima from SunGard Energy, where he was Vice-President of Product Management (Europe), responsible for guiding the evolution of SunGard’s energy value chain solutions.
Dr. Earthey’s wealth of experience in the energy industry spans over 20 years. Previously, he was Global Manager of LogicaCMG’s greenhouse gas emissions management solutions business, where he was responsible for the development and direction of global strategy within the GHG emissions area of the energy and utilities market. During his tenure at LogicaCMG, he also worked as senior practitioner in retail energy trading and risk management, and held a number of principal consultancy roles as vision-holder, business process analyst, and system architect. Prior to LogicaCMG, Mark was a Middle Office Manager at SEEBOARD, now part of EdF Energy.
Dr. Earthey is a graduate of the Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK, gaining M.Sc. and D.Phil. degrees.
Mr. Nadelhoffer, LIM, A Morningstar Company
Mr. Nadelhoffer has over 5 years of experience in energy data management. He has a degree in industrial engineering from UW-Madison. He has spent time implementing complex work flows of market data from data vendors through to risk and accounting systems. Additionally, he has worked as a consultant developing custom interfaces to transfer curves and curve components from home grown warehouses into off the shelf risk systems. In the past 5 years Mr. Nadelhoffer has worked with clients in the Americas, Europe and Asia to understand the unique local challenges within global deployment. As LIM’s Director of Energy Products, he strives to bring to market configurable solutions to meet the common client needs without sacrificing a client’s individual business strategy. Prior to his Energy Products role Mr. Nadelhoffer worked in sales and traded virtual electricity with in the Midwest ISO.
Mr. Alan Gunn, SVP Product Marketing, SolArc, Inc.
Alan Gunn is SVP of Product Marketing at SolArc, including market assessment, strategic product planning and direction, new technology and managing external communication channels. Gunn joined SolArc in April 2009 to direct sales and sales strategy for the SolArc RightAngle Banking segment and the SolArc Natural Gas Solution. With more than 20 years of experience in energy, technology, and commodities trading and risk management, Alan’s broad expertise developed the Banking and Natural Gas solutions into robust industry leaders in these markets. Prior to joining SolArc Gunn served in senior sales management positions with Kiodex and Altra Energy Technologies, and was responsible for launching Sungard Kiodex commodity globally by opening and opening offices in London and Singapore. He also led Vitria and Manugistics into the creation of global energy vertical markets. And, served in both a trading and operational capacity for Texas Eastern and Duke Energy. Gunn earned his Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Texas A&M University.
Mr Gavin Lavelle, Chief Executive Officer, Brady PLC
Gavin joined Brady in September 2007, with over 25 years experience in the international financial software and banking industry. Having worked in investment banking for 10 years with Banque Paribas as Head of Equity Derivative Trading and latterly Director of Deutsche Bank where his responsibility was Global Head of Equity Derivative Trading, Gavin founded RioFin, a Cambridge based software development company focused on capital markets trading. Following RioFin’s acquisition in 2000 by SunGard he continued as Chief Executive Officer of Panorama, a leading risk management solution, before heading the take-over of Sherwood Systems, a leading insurance company, where he also had the role of Chief Executive Officer. Gavin holds a BSc in Maths and Computer Science from Southampton University.
The conference will take place on the 23rd May 2011 with a pre-event registration and a cocktail reception held in the evening of May 22, 2011 at the Hotel Yasmin in Prague.
