Speakers
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Juan Valenzuela Fund Manager, Artemis Investment Management
Juan has degrees in both Law and Business from Carlos III University in Madrid. He began his career in 2003 at JP Morgan in Edinburgh. He joined SWIP in 2006 to manage several mandates, including its Absolute Return Bond Fund. Juan went next to Alliance Trust, where from 2012 he helped launch and then co-managed the Dynamic Bond Fund. Before joining Artemis in February 2019, Juan worked from 2015 at Kames Capital, where he co-managed Kames’ Strategic (onshore and global) Bond Funds, LBPAM Kames Absolute Return Bond Fund and Core Plus Fund. Juan is a CFA charterholder.
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Craig Stevenson Institutional Director, Artemis Investment Management
Craig is a member of the institutional business development team at Artemis, engaging with investment consultants and institutional asset owners across the range of Artemis’ investment strategies. Craig joined in June 2022 from Kempen Capital Management where he led on the development of their UK institutional business. Prior to this, he held a similar role at Old Mutual Global Investors. Before moving to asset management, Craig was a senior investment consultant at Willis Towers Watson specialising in equity and hedge fund manager research and advising clients on manager selection and portfolio construction.
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Arif Saad Co-Head of Investment Strategy, Kempen Capital
Arif, CFA, is responsible for leading Kempen UK’s investment proposition. This includes designing and developing strategic and tactical asset allocation strategies for our UK clients, including use of liability hedging, alternatives and research of innovative asset classes.
Prior to joining Kempen in 2020, Arif was a Fiduciary Manager at Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), and one of the architects of their fiduciary management offering. Prior to this, Arif was head of the Strategic Client Relationship Executive team at LGIM, working with their largest and most sophisticated UK pension funds clients, focusing on risk management and derivative strategies. Arif began his career within Mercer’s UK investment consulting business, where he advised a portfolio of defined benefit and defined contribution pension schemes, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds on the full spectrum of investment issues, including investment strategy, manager and mandate structure, manager selection, transitions and performance analysis.
Arif graduated from the University of Warwick with a BSc (Hons) in Industrial Economics. He is a CFA Charterholder and in 2021, Financial News named him a Rising Star in Asset Management.
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Madeline King Co-Head of Global Investment Grade Credit Research, Legal & General Investment Management
Madeline is Co-Head of the Global Investment Grade Credit Research team and is also responsible for coverage of the telecoms, media and technology sectors. Madeleine joined LGIM in 2015 from Credit Suisse where she worked as a credit trading desk analyst for five years. Prior to that, she was a TMT research analyst at HSBC and Barclays Capital. Madeleine graduated from the London School of Economics and holds a first class BSc in Business Mathematics and Statistics.
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Toby Orpin Head of Fixed Income Distribution, Legal & General Investment Management
Toby is responsible for the distribution of LGIM’s global fixed income capabilities to pension funds and institutional investors, and to their consultants. Prior to joining LGIM in April 2014, Toby was at LCP Investment Consultancy, working with clients on investment strategy and researching fund managers in the alternatives investment space. Toby has a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Exeter.
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Anders S. Persson, CFA Chief Investment Officer, Head of Nuveen Global Fixed Income, Nuveen
Anders is chief investment officer and is responsible for overseeing all portfolio management, research, trading and investment risk management activities. He is also member of the Nuveen Global Investment Committee.
Prior to his current role, he was head of global fixed income portfolio management and head of research. Before joining the firm, he was a founding member of the team that established SG Cowen’s European high yield effort in London, and later worked to establish the high-yield research effort within Schroders Investment Management. He has also worked as a sell-side high-yield research analyst at Wells Fargo (formerly First Union).
Anders graduated with a B.S. from Lander College and an M.B.A. from Winthrop University. He is a member of the CFA Institute and the North Carolina Society of Security Analysts. Anders serves on the Board of the North Carolina Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
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Sophie Ballard Director, UK Institutional, Nuveen
Sophie Ballard is a Director, UK Institutional at Nuveen Asset Management and part of the Global Client Group. Sophie is responsible for relationships with UK investors and growing the UK institutional business across multiple distribution channels including LGPS, DB and DC pension schemes. She has over a decade of experience in institutional sales, relationship management and strategic account oversight, working with investors across the pension and financial institution client segments.
Prior to Nuveen, Sophie held a number of roles at SSGA, where most recently she was responsible for growing the UK DC and strategic partners group.
Prior to this, she held relationship management roles in both London and New York. She also sits on the Returners workstream of the Diversity Project and is involved in a number of initiatives championing women in the workplace. She studied History at the University of Nottingham and is IMC qualified.
