Risk Management and Analysis, Volume 2, New Markets and Products

Carol Alexander obtained her PhD in Algebraic Number Theory, then worked at the Gemente Universiteit in Amsterdam and at UBS Phillips and Drew in London before joining the Mathematics Faculty of the University of Sussex in 1985. She holds a BSc in Mathematics with Experimental Psychology and an MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics. Since 1990 Dr Alexander has been consulting, training, speaking at conferences, writing books and articles, and developing software in the areas of risk management and investment analysis. In 1996 she became the academic director of Algorithmics Inc (part-time) and in 1998 she eventually left the academic world to join Nikko Global Holdings as Director and Head of Market Risk Modelling. However, she retains a visiting fellowship at the University of Sussex. She has developed a number of computer programs and software packages for Risk and Investment analysis based on time series techniques. One of these was the winner of the first International Non-Linear Financial Forecasting Competition in 1997. Another used the concept of cointegration to build long-term index tracking tools for fund management, and long-short strategies for portfolio hedging. A third software module is based on her original research, using orthogonal factors to produce large GARCH covariance matrices for factor models.