Descriptive text: This book will help those who work in the Operations area of Financial Services firms and have to deal with the daily business of cash & liquidity management. It will also help those concerned with change in those areas too. In 2014, there is a huge amount of change, much of it mandatory, must-do. This book explains those changes and offers some insights on how to address them. This is a practitioner's guide; the view from the Bankers' Plumber and one that has had the benefit of input from a broad church of people who do this for a living.
About the Author: Olaf has over 25 years experience in Financial Services. In a career that has included work in Zurich, New York & London, his work has covered investment banking and private banking. His experience covers many disciplines and product areas. He started his career as a graduate trainee just after Big Bang in 1987, at Salomon Brothers in London, who were then the kings of the bond market and the proverbial Master of the Universe. Michael Lewis, later of Liars Poker fame, was one of the many colourful characters he had to support as a trainee in Operations, the bit of an investment bank that makes sure things work every day. After Salomon, Olaf moved to Goldman Sachs in Zurich, Switzerland and helped set up an in-house clearing and settlement operation for all Swiss securities and establish Goldman's private bank in Switzerland, as well as its presence on the local Swiss exchange. Several of the traders that Olaf supported on those days have gone on to prominence: Xavier Rolet is now CEO of the LSE, Jeremy Isaacs headed Lehman in Europe and Michael Hintze went on to a knighthood and prominence as a hedge fund owner. Three years were spent in New York, which included working for a unit in what would come to be known as Operational Risk. In 1999, Olaf returned with his family to Zurich, and started working for CSFB, the investment banking arm of Credit Suisse. leading the global effort for a major project in support of all foreign exchange (FX) transactions; CLS, Continuous Linked Settlement. This was the industry's answer to avoiding a huge number of big payments for the huge volume of trades where banks were buying one currency and selling another. This work led to a role leading Product Development & Support for Credit Suisse's Transaction Services business and then for the prime brokerage team, where he worked on institutional custody solutions, Islamic finance and establishing an equity swap facility in Saudi Arabia. In 2009, Olaf established himself as am independent consultant. He worked for three years for Nomura, setting up their CLS practice in a record short time of just 11 months. This included work revising the Nostro network, street facing trading, liquidity management and derivatives clearing. More recently Olaf worked with State Street on derivatives clearing and IBM on a project to find new ways to match and settle payments not going through CLS. In early 2014, Olaf started work for Luxoft, the leading Eastern European outsourcer.