George H. Stein, CFA, Managing Director

Practice Areas:   Energy, Oils, Gas, Power, Metals, Agriculturals, Softs, Dry Bulk (Coal, Iron Ore, Freight), Commodity Indices, Indices, Trading, Sales/Origination, Structuring, Portfolio Management,  Research, Risk, Quant, Brokerage/Execution, Mid-Office (COO, CFO, Legal), Capital Raising, Chartering, Pipeline Scheduling.
                             

 
T: +1 646 205-3557 M: +1 917 545-9850
E: ghstein@commoditytalent.com
Skype: georgehstein


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   George H. Stein, CFA created Commodity Talent LLC in 2009 and currently services Bulge Bracket Wall Street Investment Banks, Hedge Funds from marquee to startup, major Merchant Trading Firms, Commercial and Industrial Companies, Marquee Private Equity Firms, Brokerages, Prop Shops and Commodity High-Frequency Traders. The firm grew out of his work developing the commodities practice at Whitney Group as head of the effort, engaging in client development and leading execution of senior searches. His expert commentary has appeared on television, radio and in print and he is invited as a speaker at financial service conferences.
   George Stein came to executive search following more than a decade as a prize-winning financial journalist. The expertise and contacts he developed across capital markets, investment banking and all aspects of the energy sector are invaluable to a broad range of commodity clients in financial services as well as trading groups, hedge funds, private equity firms and producer and industrial companies.
    George Stein went to Bloomberg from Platts Oilgram News where he was New York Bureau Chief. Earlier in his career, he served as Senior News Editor in charge of energy coverage at Radio Free Europe in Munich and was a reporter at news organizations including the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald.
    George Stein earned a BA in Mathematics from Swarthmore College and an MA in Mathematics from Columbia University. He was awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation in 2001.

Helyette Geman, Ph.D., Special Advisor

Specialization Areas:  Quantitative Methods, Systematic Trading, Crude Oil,  Electricity, Metals, Agriculturals, Interest rates, Catastrophic risk, Government/Market Structure Policy, Portfolio Management.

 

T: +1 646 205-3557 
E: hgeman@commoditytalent.com



 

 
Helyette GEMAN is a Professor of Finance at Birkbeck, University of London where she is the Director of the Commodity Finance Centre and ESCP Europe. She is a graduate of Ecole Normale Superieure in Mathematics, holds a Masters degree in Theoretical Physics and a PhD in Probability from the University Pierre et Marie Curie and a PhD in Finance from the University Pantheon Sorbonne.


Professor Geman has been for the last 18 years a scientific advisor to major banks, energy and mining companies as well as commodity houses, covering the spectrum of interest rates, catastrophic risk, crude oil and electricity, metals and agriculturals, including land and water. Professor Geman was the first president of the Bachelier Finance Society and has published more than 115 papers in top international finance and insurance Journals including the Journal of Finance, Mathematical Finance, Geneva Papers on Insurance, Journal of Financial Economics. She was named in 1993 Member of Honor of the French Society of Actuaries. Professor Geman's research includes interest rates and catastrophic insurance, asset price and commodity forward curve modeling, valuation of physical assets in the commodity industry, as well as exotic option pricing for which she won the first prize of the Merrill Lynch Awards in 1995. Her pioneer work on extreme events and CAT bonds received in 1994 the first Prize of the AFIR (Actuarial Approach to Financial Risk) awards. Prof Geman was named in 2004 in the Hall of Fame of Energy Risk and received in July 2008 the medal for Sciences of the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Alma Mater University of Bologna for the CGMY model, a pure jump Levy process widely used in finance since 2002 and in insurance since 2004.

Her book Commodities and Commodity Derivatives: Energy, Metals and Agriculturals published by Wiley Finance in January 2005 has become the reference book in the field. She edited in 2008 the book Risk Management in Commodity Markets: from Shipping to Agriculturals and Energy and was in 2010 the first Wilmar- International Invited Professor of Commodities Business at Singapore Management University. Prof Geman is a Member of the Board of the UBS-Bloomberg Commodity Index.

Professor Geman counts many brilliant characters among her past and present PhD students,among them Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan. Consulting assignments include work as Scientific  Advisor to the European Commission on Agricultural Commodities;  Member of the Board of the UBS-Bloomberg Commodity Index, advisor to Office Cherifien des Phosphates – Morocco, advisor to Bunge on land acquisition in Brazil and the US, advisor to Wilmar International (Singapore) on M&As related to palm oil and other agricultural commodities, expert witness for the State of California on commodity-related court cases, advisor to a Private Equity fund in London on the purchase of physical assets - Aluminium smelters, advisor to the Gestore of Mercatto Elettrico, Rome, 2005- 2006; Scientific Expert for Totsa (Geneva) and Total Gas & Oil, London. (Financial positioning using physical assets and structured trades in oil and refined products.) Adviser to BHP Billiton, The Hague. (Modeling of coal forward curves; option pricing in illiquid markets.)