Capital Link Forum | Closed-End Funds and Global ETF Conference

Ralph L. Schlosstein, President and a Director of BlackRock, is a member of the Executive and Management Committees. He is also Chairman of the Board of BlackRock's family of closed-end mutual funds; Chairman of the Board, Trustee and President of the BlackRock Liquidity Funds; and a Director of several of BlackRock's alternative investment vehicles. In addition, he is the co-chair of the Alternatives Operating Committee and he oversees BlackRock's Illiquid Market and Alternative Investments business...more

Steven A. Baffico is the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the BlackRock Private Client Group. Mr. Baffico's responsibilities include sales and marketing efforts across investment products and platforms, encompassing mutual funds, separately managed accounts and value-added strategies. He is also head of the closed-end fund business unit for the Private Client Group, a family of 104 funds with approximately $45 billion in assets. Closed-end responsibilities include origination, syndication, investment banking and sales of IPO issues and secondary marketing....more

Mark Armbruster, CFA, Chief Investment Officer As Alesco Advisors' Chief Investment Officer, Mark establishes the firm's investment policy and manages client portfolios. Prior to joining Alesco, Mark worked on Wall Street, covering the aerospace and defense industries in the Equity Research department at Salomon Smith Barney. He subsequently worked as an Equity Strategist, also at Salomon Smith Barney. Mark is a graduate of the University of Rochester and is a Chartered Financial Analyst...more

Charles A. (Tony) Baker
Managing Director, ETF Marketplace
American Stock Exchange LLC

Tony Baker is Managing Director of the Exchange Traded Marketplace at the American Stock Exchange� (Amex�). Mr. Baker is responsible for spearheading the active ETF initiative at the Amex. Mr. Baker brings to the Amex over 25 years experience in the investment industry, specializing in new product development, quantitative investment techniques, and derivatives strategies. Prior to joining the Amex in 2003, Mr. Baker was a managing director at Alpha Strategies, LLC, the quantitative research and development firm responsible for developing the underlying technology behind active ETFs...more

Douglas R. Bond
EVP & Portfolio Manager
Cohen & Steers Closed-End Opportunity Fund, Cohen & Steers

Douglas R. Bond, executive vice president, is the portfolio manager for Cohen & Steers' Closed-End Opportunity Fund (FOF). In addition, he also leads the firm's closed-end portfolio consulting effort with Van Kampen Investments for their closed-end unit investment trust products.. Before joining Cohen & Steers in 2004, Mr. Bond worked at Merrill Lynch for 23 years...more

As of 1996, founder, President and CEO of Capital Link, Inc., an international investor relations and financial advisory group. It assists listed companies and capital markets related organizations to develop and maintain access to European and North American investors. He also established and managed, Alexander Capital, L.P, a US broker-dealer firm, which developed brokerage and investment banking business in North America with the Greek, Egyptian and Russian markets...more

Robert C.Brooks
Senior Vice President and National Sales Manager
PowerShares Capital Management LLC

Robert C. Brooks has recently joined the senior management team of PowerShares Capital Management as the Senior Vice President/National Sales Manager. His extensive financial sales management experience has uniquely equipped him with the ability to significantly contribute to PowerShares 'aggressive growth goals...more

Edmund Burke, President. Ned joined ALPS in 1991 as National Sales Manager. In that capacity, he was responsible for building wholesaling and marketing programs for clients' mutual funds as well as overseeing new business development for ALPS. In 1996, he was promoted to Executive Vice President and elected to the Board of Directors of ALPS. Before joining ALPS in 1991, Ned was a Regional Vice President for the Pioneer Funds in Boston...more

Mariana F. Bush, CFA
Closed-End Funds & ETF Analyst, Advisory Services Group
Wachovia Securities

Mariana F. Bush is the closed-end fund and exchange-traded analyst at Wachovia Securities. She began her career at Furman Selz in New York as an associate analyst following technology companies long before the internet became a household name. Bush joined Wachovia Securities in 1991 as an analyst in Investment Strategy. In 1993, she began following closed-end funds, and in the late Nineties she also started to cover exchange-traded funds...more

Amy M. Charles
Vice President, Director - Closed-End Fund Research
Raymond James

Ms. Charles, as the Vice President and Director of Closed-End Fund Research, is responsible for setting general research policy and strategy. She joined Raymond James Financial in November 1995 and joined the Closed-End Fund Research group in September of 1998. Prior to joining Closed-End Fund Research, she spent two and a half years in the Equity Research Department...more

Dennis P. Emanuel
Managing Director & Senior Analyst, Closed-End Fund\ETF Research Group
Citigroup Investment Research

Dennis P. Emanuel is a Managing Director and Senior Analyst for the Closed-End Fund\ETF Research Group at Citigroup Investment Research. Prior to joining Citigroup in June 1998, Dennis worked at Merrill Lynch as its senior bond fund analyst in its Closed-End Fund Research Department, where he started in 1991. Before that, he was Director of PS program budgets at the New York City Department of Health, where he commenced employment in 1989...more

Mike is a Business Development Officer for Barclays Global Investors. He is responsible for managing relationships with the broker/dealer community in the Metro NY region. He has over 12 years of experience in the financial service industry. Prior to joining Barclays Global Investors, Mike served as a Regional Marketing Director for Dreyfus and Putnam Investments...more

Kenneth S. Fincher
Vice President
Director of Product Management & Client Advocacy

Ken Fincher serves as Product Manager and Client Advocate for the Calamos closed-end and open-end mutual funds. In this role, he works closely with Calamos strategic alliance partners, as well as Intermediary Distribution, Portfolio Attribution, CRM and Marketing teams, to ensure that Calamos funds are well supported and positioned...more

Derek Fulton
Head of Global and Asian Bonds
Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Fund, Aberdeen Global Income Fund, First Trust/Aberdeen Global Opportunity Income Fund and Toronto listed Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Investment Company Ltd.

Brent Hillhouse is a Sales Executive within Vanguard's Institutional Investments Group where his primary responsibility is to help public and private defined benefit pension plans to use exchange traded funds (ETFs) as solutions to support their investment management needs. Prior to his current role, Mr. Hillhouse held a wide variety of managerial roles...more

Jonathan G.G. Isaac is a Vice President of Eaton Vance Management, where he is responsible for the oversight of all of Eaton Vance's closed-end fund products trading in the secondary market. Additionally, he is responsible for the company's relationships with research analysts, specialist firms and all fund communications as well being involved in new product development. Mr. Isaac joined Eaton Vance in 1994 and has held a variety of managerial positions in the firm's Operations, Marketing and high-net-worth Investment Counsel groups...more

Jon recently joined Merrill Lynch from UBS Wealth Management Research where he has been a closed-end funds analyst for the past 11 years. Prior to the merger of UBS and PaineWebber, Jon was the closed-end funds analyst at PaineWebber. Previously, he worked on privatization projects as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Kiev, Ukraine, and was a financial analyst with the American International Group. Jon received his BA degree in finance from Emory University...more

Jeffrey Margolin
Vice President, Closed-End Fund Analyst
First Trust Portfolios L.P.

Mr. Margolin is Vice President, Closed-End Fund Analyst, for First Trust Portfolios L.P. Mr. Margolin joined the firm in February 2005, after 8 years at Ryan, Beck & Co., where he was a Vice President of equity research focusing on NYSE and AMEX-listed closed-end funds. While there, he produced in-depth research reports on closed-end funds, providing insights on relative performance and portfolio strengths and weaknesses...more

Paul Mazzilli is an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley and is the Director of the Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) Research Team. His team's universe includes actively managed closed-end fund companies and passively managed index-linked ETFs. Paul's team covers a broad range of funds listed on US exchanges that invest in equities in the US and in international regions and countries as well as taxable and municipal fixed income...more

Karen R. McColl, CFA
Vice President
Investment Product Management, Evergreen Investments

Karen is Vice President of Investment Product Management for Evergreen Investments. Her role includes overseeing both closed end and open-end fund offerings. Karen serves as the primary contact for closed end analysts, directs after-market support efforts, and is also closely involved in new product initiatives. Prior to joining Evergreen in 2005, Karen was the Director of Portfolio Analysis at Columbia Management, where she led a team of fund analysts. She has 12 years of industry experience...more

Mr. McRedmond brings more than 23 years of financial industry experience to PowerShares. At PowerShares, Mr. McRedmond works on increasing the awareness and use of PowerShares ETFs within the various distribution channels, working with ETF analysts, due diligence groups and portfolio managers that construct ETF models and portfolios, along with sales and marketing personnel....more

Matthew T. Moran is Vice President, Business Development, for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and is responsible for many of the exchange's marketing and educational efforts (including advertising, seminars and publications) for pension funds, mutual funds, and other institutional investors. He had a leadership role in the development of the CBOE S&P 500 BuyWrite Index (BXMSM), the first major benchmark for options performance, and he also is involved in the marketing of many other products, including futures on the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX)...more

Melissa L. Nassar is a principal in Vanguard Financial Advisor Services heading up the Bank and RIA sales teams. Ms. Nassar joined Vanguard in 1992. Before assuming her current role, she was responsible for relationship management efforts in Vanguard Institutional Asset Management Services. Previously, she served in the Legal Department managing NASD compliance functions...more

Timothy O'Brien, CFA
Co-founder and Principal & Portfolio Manager, Crow Point Partners, LLC

Mr. O'Brien is a Principal of Crow Point Partners, LLC, a new investment advisory firm that he co-founded in 2006. Crow Point is majority owned by M.D. Sass/Macquarie Financial Strategies, L.P., a joint venture between M.D. Sass Group and the Macquarie Group. His current responsibilities include managing the Evergreen Utility & Telecommunications Fund ("EVUAX") and the Evergreen Utilities & High Income Fund ("ERH"). Mr. O'Brien was employed with Evergreen from 2002 to 2006...more

Natalie Pickering is a Business Development Officer for iShares in our San Francisco office. Natalie has also worked as a senior fixed income strategist at BGI. Prior to joining BGI, Natalie was Director of Client Services in the Executive Office of Goldman Sachs, where she was responsible for a team who managed the CEO and COO client interface...more

Kevin is Vice President and Director of Sales for SSgA's Intermediary Business Group. In this role Kevin oversees the sale of SSgA's SPDR exchange traded fund family to Hedge Funds, Asset Management Firms, and the Trading Community. Additionally Kevin is responsible for the sale of SSgA's ETFs, mutual funds, and separately managed account strategies into the Registered Investment Advisor and Family office marketplaces...more

Kris Rollenhagen
Senior Vice President, Closed-End & Exchange-Traded Index Funds
Oppenheimer & Co.

Kris Rollenhagen is Senior Vice President, Closed-End & Exchange-Traded Index Funds for Oppenheimer & Co. Previously Mr. Rollenhagen was Managing Director, CEF & ETF Research & Portfolios at Claymore Securities immidiately following his 11 year tenure at Prudential Financial as SVP & Director of Closed-End & Exchange-Traded Funds.Prior to Prudential Financial Mr. Rollenhagen spent 9 years at Gruntal & Co as VP and Manager, Financial Services where his responsibilities included closed-end fund research and initiating REIT research for Gruntal...more

David Schulte has been a full time Managing Director of Tortoise Capital Advisors since 2002, and serves as CEO and President for each of its four publicly-traded, closed-end funds. Previously, he served as a general partner at Kansas City Equity Partners, where he led private equity financings for two growth MLPs. Before joining Kansas City Equity Partners in 1993, Mr. Schulte spent five years as an investment banker at the predecessor of Oppenheimer & Co., Inc., and was a securities attorney for three years...more

Jim Wiandt
Editor
Journal of Indexes and Publisher of IndexUniverse.com and Exchange-Traded Funds Report (ETFR)

Jim Wiandt is Editor of the Journal of Indexes and Publisher of IndexUniverse.com and Exchange-Traded Funds Report (ETFR). Wiandt also oversees the Financial Technology and Design Group (FTDG) of Index Publications LLC. The Journal of Indexes was originally founded by John Prestbo of Dow Jones Indexes, and has served as the "book of record" for the index industry since 1999. Wiandt took over as Editor of JoI in 2001, and the company he heads, Index Publications LLC, purchased the Exchange-Traded Funds Report (ETFR) in 2003 and IndexUniverse.com in 2005...more

Michael joins XTF after serving as a Managing Director at Legg Mason. Michael had been the US Head of Sub-Advisory and Investment Only Business from 2000 � 2006 for Salomon Brothers / CitiGroup Asset Management. He was responsible for strategic business decisions, product development strategies, budgeting, client relationship management and all fund board management...more

Paul Zemsky, CFA
Head of Multi-Asset Strategies and Solutions Group and Head of Derivative Strategies
ING Investment Management

Paul Zemsky joined ING Investment Management in May 2005 as Head of Derivative Strategies. In this role, he oversees derivative strategies for credit, interest rate, and equity products, and supports the organization on a number of key areas, including product development and risk management for both proprietary and third-party businesses. This includes hedging and overlay strategies, as well as focusing on new business development opportunities...more