Bio
Liaquat Ahamed
Liaquat Ahamed is an investment manager and author of the best seller Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, about the lead-up to the Great Depression. The book won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History, the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Gold Medal for 2010, the 2009 Financial Times-Goldman Sachs Best Business Book of the Year, and was selected by The New York Times and TIME magazine as one of their top ten books of 2009.
Ahamed has been a professional investment manager for 25 years; he has worked at the World Bank and the New York-based partnership of Fischer Francis Trees and Watts, where he served as chief executive. He is currently an adviser to several hedge fund groups including the Rock Creek Group and the Rohatyn Group; he is a director of Aspen Insurance Co., and serves on the boards of trustees of the Brookings Institution and the New America Foundation.
Robert Hormats
Robert D. Hormats is under secretary for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs in the U.S. Department of State. Prior to his appointment in 2009, Hormats was vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a managing director of Goldman Sachs & Co. Hormats has served as US assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, ambassador and deputy US trade representative, and senior deputy assistant secretary for economic and business affairs at the Department of State.
He was a senior staff member on the National Security Council from 1969 to 1977, where he was senior economic advisor to Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. He was a recipient of the French Legion of Honor and Arthur Fleming Award. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Hormats is the author of several books including The Price of Liberty.
Christopher M. Hyzy
Christopher M. Hyzy is managing director and chief investment officer at U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. In this role, he develops, manages, and oversees the investment process, determines the investment view of the firm, and develops and manages its asset allocation strategy and investment policies. He also is responsible for the development and execution of investment strategy including overall portfolio management, specialty asset management, institutional investment, wealth structuring, and trading for U.S. Trust. Previously, he served as chief investment strategist for U.S. Trust. Prior to joining U.S. Trust, Hyzy was chief investment officer and head of product strategy for the Latin American market region of Citigroup Private Bank. Prior to Citigroup, Hyzy had a 13-year tenure at Merrill Lynch. In his latest position there, he was director of Merrill Lynch's Investment Policy Group and head of the Investment Committee for International Private Clients.
Gillian Tett
Gillian Tett is the US managing editor of the Financial Times, where she leads the editorial development of the paper's US edition. During her nearly 20 years at the publication, she has served in a number of capacities including capital markets editor, deputy editor of the Lex column, Tokyo bureau chief, and a reporter in London. She won Journalist of the Year (2009) and Business Journalist of the Year (2008), both from the British Press Awards. In 2007 she was awarded the Wincott prize, the premier British award for financial journalism, for her capital markets coverage. She is the best-selling author of Fool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe; and Saving the Sun: A Wall Street Gamble to Rescue Japan from its Trillion Dollar Meltdown, which won Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spear's Book Awards in 2009.