FN100 Most Influential Women: The Regulators

Financial News has published its 2012 list of the most influential women in Europe's financial markets .Here are the profiles of those at the forefront of the regulatory debate.

• Sharon Bowles
Member of the European Parliament
Chairman of the European Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, European Parliament

With more than 50 items on the go at any one time and 10 new rules in the final stages of negotiation, Bowles has had her hands full working on everything from OTC derivatives reform to bank capital levels. As chairman of the European Parliamentary Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, her main focus right now is Basel III. Over the next year, she will be busy ensuring that a banking union in the eurozone does not push the UK out of Europe or split the single market – both issues which she says are crucial to London’s future as an international banking centre for the EU and for the region’s diversity.

• Nadia Calviño
Deputy director general of the Internal Market and Services Directorate General
European Commission

Trained as an economist and lawyer, Calviño joined the European Commission in 2006 and is one of two deputy directors general within the Internal Market and Services Directorate General. She oversees several units, including the capital and companies, financial markets and financial institutions directorates. Calviño previously worked on macroeconomic analysis, foreign trade, competition and economic policy at the Spanish Ministry of Economy and played an important role in overhauling Spanish competition law. She liaises with Basel as well as G20 leaders on matters related to financial stability, such as shadow banking and systemically important financial institutions.

• Elizabeth Corley
Chief executive
Allianz Global Investors

Corley has continued her form as a leading light in negotiations with politicians and regulators globally on behalf of the asset management industry as well as trying to increase the engagement of other buyside leaders. In addition to being in charge of a business that employs 2,800 people and manages €279bn of assets in her day job, Corley is also a board member of lobby group TheCityUK and its international regulatory steering group; a non-executive director on the Financial Reporting Council; and a board member of the Forum of European Asset Managers, which is a group of 15 industry chiefs.

• Joanna Cound
Head of European government affairs and public policy
BlackRock

Cound runs a team of four in Europe looking at how regulation impacts BlackRock, investors, fund structures and the industry as a whole. She says it’s nigh on impossible to get her list of top regulatory priorities down to less than 15 and travels for three out of every four weeks, meeting regulators, politicians and lobbyists across Europe. Over the next year, top of her priorities list will be the review of the markets in financial instruments directive, the Ucits VI consultation and the packaged retail investment products initiative, which builds on transparency principles of the key investor information document. She is a member of BlackRock’s global government affairs steering committee and is on the board of the European Fund and Asset Management Association. She has previously worked for Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, Fidelity, Citigroup and the European Commission. In her downtime, Cound enjoys cycling and swimming with her children, and she and her husband make sure they go on a date once a week.

• Sally Dewar
Managing director, risk
JP Morgan

A former board member at the Financial Services Authority, Dewar now works on JP Morgan’s responses to and implementation of new regulation. She has played an important role in shifting the firm’s focus from traditional lobbying to providing education to policymakers around the most pressing issues, often bringing the end-users of its services into the debate. She continues to influence global regulation. She has met with the Federal Reserve to discuss financial market utilities, which make up the plumbing of the financial system, and she sits on the 30-strong securities and markets stakeholder group of the European Securities and Markets Authority.

• Dame Amelia Fawcett
Chairman
Hedge Fund Standards Board

Since becoming chairman of the UK hedge fund industry body in July last year, Fawcett has led a push to take adoption of the HFSB’s standards global and drum up support in both Asia and the US. So far about 60 hedge fund managers accounting for $215bn of assets have signed up to the HFSB’s standard (which consists of 36 pages of requirements) as well as 46 investors. A trained lawyer, Fawcett spent two decades at Morgan Stanley, rising to become vice-chairman of the firm’s European operations. She left in 2007 to become chairman of Pensions First, a start-up in the then rapidly expanding pensions buyout industry.

• Tina Fordham
Senior global political analyst
Citigroup

Fordham’s role analysing global political developments and how they will affect economies and markets has come into its own. A former senior adviser in the UK Prime Minister’s strategy unit, she helped set up the economic and political strategies unit at Citi. It serves corporate and investment banking clients and recently published a mid-year outlook, providing political insight on the likes of Russia, Greece, North Korea and Libya. In it, Fordham highlighted the “risk of violent disruption in Greece”. Fordham holds a Master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University’s School for International Public Affairs, and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s global agenda council.

• Sophie Gautié
Head of strategy and corporate development
BNP Paribas Securities Services

Gautié set up BNP Paribas Securities Services’ public affairs team in 2002, and now translates global regulation into strategy, growth and new products for the bank. Ten years ago most of her lobbying efforts were around clearing and settlement but, since the financial crisis, regulation impacts every strand of the bank’s business and all its client segments. Gautié says: “Regulators act for two reasons: crisis or industry consensus. Since the financial crisis, there has been a change in pace and a clear shift from efficiency to safety.” A competitive swimmer in her teens, Gautié this summer took part in a 2.4km open-water race in France and has already started training for next year’s race. She is also a voracious reader and is on the judging panel of this year’s Elle Magazine fiction prize in France.

• Hannah Gurga
Head of European affairs
Icap

Gurga joined interdealer-broker Icap in February in a newly created role to prepare the firm for regulatory change. Her main focus right now is on the Dodd-Frank Act in the US, the markets in financial instruments directive and the European market infrastructure regulation. Having previously spent six years working for HM Treasury, she is now experiencing firsthand the practical challenges of implementing several new rules in a short time frame. Gurga says: “Rulemakers don’t always understand the resource implications of their decision making.” She is proud to have been part of the Treasury’s response to the Icelandic banking crisis in October 2008, often working through the night to put together a plan to protect retail depositors in the UK. When she gets a chance to read something other than regulatory proposals, Gurga enjoys immersing herself in Tudor history, inspired by Hilary Mantel’s book Bring up the Bodies.

• Judith Hardt
Secretary general
Federation of European Securities Exchanges

Fese, which represents 46 exchanges, has become one of Europe’s foremost lobby groups under Hardt’s tenure. During the past 18 months, Fese has been active on numerous regulatory proposals, particularly the Market Abuse Directive and the review of the Market in Financial Instruments Directive. Born in the German region of Belgium, Hardt attributes her success navigating the European political machine to growing up in a competitive household of seven children. She took on her current role in 2005, before which she served as secretary general of the European Mortgage Federation. She is also vice chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority’s elected securities market stakeholder group.

• Dörte Höppner
Secretary General
European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association

Since taking over as secretary general of EVCA in Brussels a year ago, Höppner has taken steps to unite the European private equity industry and paint it in a more positive light to a wider audience, particularly regulators. She is also working to collate more robust data from national associations to make EVCA the repositary for credible and comprehensive information on the European buyout industry. This summer, she accompanied the vice-president of the European Commission on a trip to Washington DC to promote the industry, and was named the most influential person in European private equity by Financial News.

• Elke König
President
BaFin

König began her tenure as president of the German regulator in January after serving as a member of the International Accounting Standards Board and chief financial officer of reinsurance firm Hannover Rückversicherung. König has been vocal about the need for a careful approach to banking union in Europe, even if that means delaying proposals. She has also stressed the importance of a smooth transition to such a union. As the leader of BaFin, she will ultimately be responsible for ensuring the regulator finds its feet under the new regime. BaFin, charged with ensuring the stability of Germany’s financial markets, currently supervises 1,880 banks, 700 financial services firms, 30 pension funds and 77 fund managers in addition to insurers.

• Yvonne Lenoir
Regulatory policy adviser
European Fund and Asset Management Association

As a regulatory policy adviser for Efama, which represents members with a collective €14 trillion in assets under management, Lenoir spends most of her time focused on proposals from the European Commission. The group is currently working with policymakers on at least 30 pieces of regulation, but the alternative investment fund managers directive, Ucits VI and a number of retail investor protection rules are top priorities. Before joining Efama, Lenoir worked at Swiss law firm Lenz & Staehelin and spent three years at Brussels-based KBC Asset Management.

• Jane Lowe
Director of markets
Investment Management Association

Working for the UK investment industry’s lobby group, Lowe spends much of her time in Brussels arguing for market structures that properly protect investors’ assets. She is currently making waves in the arcane world of over-the-counter derivatives to try to get a better deal for investors. Lowe believes too much rulemaking is being pushed through in a rush because financial regulation has become such a political hot potato. She says: “I don’t feel regulators have clear objectives. Markets are there for moving capital around, and that has been forgotten.” Lowe is a poacher turned gamekeeper – she spent the first half of her career working in finance for global corporations Jardine Matheson and ED&F Man before becoming a market regulator at the UK’s Financial Services Authority. She says when she retires she would like to move to the countryside and indulge her love of nature.

• Arlene McCarthy
Member of the European Parliament
Vice-chairman of the European Parliamentary Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, European Parliament

McCarthy scored a major victory in October when the European Parliament backed her proposals to introduce EU-wide criminal sanctions for those who commit market abuse. She pushed through bonus rules in 2011 and has spent much of the past year working on the market abuse directive, particularly focused on commodity speculation, and liaising with US regulators. She plans to spend more time in the coming 12 to 18 months on a push for greater transparency in commodities trading. McCarthy has also spoken out to encourage fund managers to become more active participants in the regulatory debate.

• Tracey McDermott
Director of enforcement and financial crime
Financial Services Authority

After a year as the FSA’s acting director of enforcement and financial crime, McDermott landed the permanent role in August. She has handed out more than £75m in fines, disrupted more than 1,000 unauthorised business schemes and helped secure several convictions for insider dealing. As the FSA prepares for its conversion to the Financial Conduct Authority next year, McDermott plans to continue a “credible deterrence” hard line, taking a proactive approach to catching and punishing criminals. In addition to spending resources on the Libor rate-fixing scandal, she is also working to improve co-operation between the different divisions of the FSA to catch criminals at an earlier stage.

• Isabel Pastor
Senior adviser
International Organization of Securities Commissions

A Madrid native, Pastor has worked for Iosco for a decade, during which time the organisation has become increasingly important and influential. Reporting directly to the secretary general of Iosco, Pastor’s role ranges from implementing strategy to working on policy consultations, supporting Iosco’s emerging market committee and helping members sign up to its memorandum of understanding on enforcement and information sharing. She previously served in the prudential standards division of the UK’s Financial Services Authority and as director of international affairs for Spain’s insurance regulator. This year, Pastor has helped to develop the Iosco Foundation, which will provide education and technical assistance to regulators in emerging markets.

• Joanna Perkins
Director
Financial Markets Law Committee

At the age of 15, Perkins was inspired to become a barrister by a green-eyed heroine in a Mills & Boon novel. She now runs a small team at the Financial Markets Law Committee, which was set up by the Bank of England as an independent body to ensure there is a stable legal framework for financial markets. The committee’s role is an increasingly important one as the volume of new rules and the speed of implementation has rocketed since Perkins took over in 2004. It has also taken on a more international dimension. The FMLC acts as a radar identifying potential problems with new proposals by sounding out market participants. Perkins likens her role to that of internal affairs. “A lot of what we say is unpalatable to regulators but, unlike most lobbyists, we are only there to make sure the regulation is robust,” she says. “We are not about mitigating rules for profit.” She prioritises her workload on a chart, ranking regulatory items gold, silver or bronze. At gold level right now are reforms to Libor, shadow banking, banking union and the potential impact on contracts should a country exit the eurozone.

• Lisa Rabbe - Miriam Schmitter
Lisa Rabbe
Head of public policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Credit Suisse

Rabbe was promoted last year and now reports directly to Fawzi Kyriakos-Saad, Credit Suisse’s Emea chief executive. She describes her job as “translating policy speak into banking speak and vice versa”. Over the past year, she has been speaking to European policymakers about issues including shadow banking, EU and French financial transaction taxes, over-the-counter derivatives, exchange-traded funds, banking union and short-selling rules. She has also been spending more time advising Credit Suisse’s financial institutions clients on regulation.

• Sue Revell
Head of government relations and regulatory reform for Europe, the Middle East and Africa
Morgan Stanley

Revell trained as a lawyer and joined Morgan Stanley in 1995, working her way up to become the bank’s co-general counsel for Emea. She was named head of regulatory reform 18 months ago and in July added government relations to her remit, as the US bank recognised the increasing importance of engaging with policymakers in Europe to deal with what Revell refers to as a “regulatory crush”. Right now her main focus is the international impact of the Dodd-Frank Act and the European market infrastructure regulation. She describes processing the various regulatory dossiers coming from both sides of the Atlantic as “completing a jigsaw puzzle when you have lost the box with the picture on it and some of the most salient pieces”. Revell enjoys paddle sports and drives a VW campervan in order to accommodate her kayak.

• Barbara Ridpath
Chief executive
International Centre for Financial Regulation

A strong believer in a multi-disciplinary approach, Ridpath describes her role as a facilitator rather than a negotiator, with a focus on having ICFR become the Chatham House of financial regulation. Her approach is bearing fruit: in September the body assembled senior figures at law firms, universities, banks, investors and regulators to discuss policy priorities, and this month is hosting an event on the European banking union. Ridpath has led the ICFR since its formation in 2009, and previously worked for Standard & Poor’s and JP Morgan and has also had a spell as economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

• Verena Ross
Executive director
European Securities and Markets Authority

Ross became Esma’s first executive director in June 2011, and plays an essential role in managing the authority’s bulging pipeline of consultations and rule making. Growth is on the agenda – Esma expects to increase from 101 staff to 160 in 2013 and its budget to rise from €20.2m to €28m. Ross started her career at the Bank of England as an economist and spent 13 years at the UK Financial Services Authority. Charged with ensuring stable financial markets in Europe, Esma will spend next year consulting on the revision of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, working on new credit rating agencies regulation, and establishing rules for venture capital funds.

• Nadia Swann
Partner, financial regulatory practice
Linklaters

Swann is the most senior female regulatory partner in Europe and Asia in law firm Linklaters’ top-ranked regulatory group. The group’s clients include the likes of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Swann advises banks, asset managers, hedge funds and pension funds but says the most important area of her work is around governance and boards of financial institutions. “Educating senior management for cultural change is very important right now,” says Swann, as altering the way people think is not something that can be legislated for. Over the past year, Swann has worked on a high-profile insider dealing investigation, a review into governance and culture for a big European bank and has produced a report on managerial behaviour for a European fund manager.

• Kay Swinburne
Member of the European Parliament, Co-ordinator on the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee
European Parliament

A shadow rapporteur for the European Parliament’s review of the markets in financial instruments directive, Swinburne continues to shape the regulatory landscape. This month she was named the most influential woman at the Financial News trading and technology awards for her efforts in the areas of clearing, trading and market infrastructure. A native of Aberystwyth, Wales, she has also focused intensely this year on a common set of rules for central securities depositories. This summer, she weighed in on discussions about gender diversity on corporate boards, trying to convince UK boards that if change does not happen quickly enough, EU-level quotas will be introduced.