Christopher Lobb

Christopher was fortunate enough to take an extended career break, he fell into a world of yachting, travel, and exploration. The fortunate position he found himself in, as a well-known and trustworthy sailor and navigator led to a fascinating series of journeys moving yachts around the Mediterranean and up and down the East coast of the United States. Christopher vigorously pursued the small but active clientele of yacht owners requiring these sorts of services developing regular business. The best hunting grounds for these clients were Fort Lauderdale and Tel Aviv although there were others. The physical rigours of this extended sabbatical make continuing this career in the future no longer tenable. Christopher demonstrated leadership, bravery and skill dealing with often difficult schedules, weather, and exceptional periods most notably the pandemic that arose during this period.

On occasion Christopher dealt with a few select clients as an accountant. This was a sideshow to the significant business of sailing and adventuring; however, it was an equally rewarding experience. Christopher assisted in the valuation of a hotel business in Tel Aviv that was later purchased by a client to expand an already successful hotel business as one example. Christopher also continued to trade commodities and currencies during this period, using profits from commercial operations to generate a useful additional revenue stream during periods of down time on the sailing side.

Key Responsibilities

Planning and quantitative analysis

Sailing and navigation

Leadership, presentation, and client management

Accountancy and trading

Parabellum is an independent proprietary trading firm specializing in futures trading. The firm works actively in London and Dublin, but also provides services to traders further afield, granting access and technology needed to trade in major markets. Christopher was an aggressive commodities and fixed income trader who enjoyed the freedom and the intellectual challenge of beating the market. Christopher has a strong background in both banking and technology, using this knowledge Christopher worked diligently and thoughtfully to develop spread trading strategies to generate replicable trading performance.

Key Responsibilities

Trading fixed income and commodity futures.

P&L management.

Trading strategy development, testing and deployment.

Integration Systems provides technology and hardware to the financial markets industry. Specialising in high performance computing and technological problem solving. The clientele varied from HFT firms, large brokers, niche ISVs and various trading venues. The most notable technology unearthed during this period was the fabric switching gold rush to enable crossing networks within the corporate banks. iSys Ltd collaborated with vendors and clients to productise disparate technologies into a deliverable solution. This technology now underpins the leading AI chip rich computing environments that are most popularly deployed in data centres to make AI systems learn and effectively conduct business processes. Notable vendors in this space were Arista, Mellanox, Solar Flare, Dell, IBM, Intel, Gnodal and various others.

Key Responsibilities

New business sales and lead generation, notable successes Morgan Stanley, the LME, VirtuStream and Otkritie Securities.

Prospecting and technological solution design were key parts of the role, a noteworthy success was the Arena, which allowed the live testing of algorithms in an entirely synthetic environment for the purpose of compliance and running an undisrupted orderly market.

Fixnetix provides outsourced services for ultra-low latency trading access, market data, hosting, and infrastructure connectivity as well as risk management solutions to leading global banks, hedge funds and proprietary trading groups.

Key Responsibilities

New business sales targeted and engaged with Morgan Stanley and BofA Merrill Lynch.

Prospecting, qualification, solution design, pricing and closing of business within the European HFT segment.

Eiger Trading Advisors Ltd is an independent investment management and advisory firm taking fiduciary responsibility for client money regarding a host of trading opportunities in fixed income and commodities markets. The combined benefits of specialization and focus gives the firm a competitive advantage leading to greater returns for clients. Eiger’s strategic focus on advisory and trading coverage gives it a quantifiable advantage in trading traditional asset classes.

Key Responsibilities

Prospecting, Sales, and Client relationship management.

Pricing and trading of OTC derivatives.

Public speaking responsibilities.

Super “D” is a specialist OTC derivatives pricing and risk management vendor, providing high quality and verifiable solutions for trading firms on both the buy and the sell side. The Black Scholes trading model modified to take account of the variance of the volatility surface provides clear and thorough pricing and risk management solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Options pricing model development keeping pace with the en vogue derivatives of the moment.

Customer retention due to constant engineering of the OTC derivatives portfolio.

Morgan Stanley is a bulge bracket investment bank with an excellent broking business focused on all aspects of trading traditional and OTC markets. At this time, Christopher was in fixed income trading OTC derivatives. This experience opened Christopher’s eyes to the world of high-performance computing and how successful modelling can create value and tradeable prices. The OTC market by its nature is opaque and requires computer analysis to be successful.

Key Responsibilities

Client services management.

New client acquisition and retention.

Derivative pricing and sales.

Position valuation and analysis.

Hedging and futures trading

TCS Ltd specialised in pricing and market data analytics. Christopher collaborated with a team of specialist sales and IT professionals with a stock of patents and a remit to productise these inventions. There were notable successes in fixed income derivatives pricing and mobile trading applications. This role was rewarding and intellectually challenging, and opened doors to later successful career moves as it was an excellent environment to learn and deploy bleeding edge technologies to achieve profitable ongoing revenue streams. The clients included the entire financial industry, specialising in front, middle and back-office solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Responsible for the largest accounts in Europe, including the “mega banks” and the hedge fund community.

Front office trading and market data solutions pricing and provision.

Middle and back-office analytics and risk systems.

A small consultancy owned and run by myself and my father, focusing on building SME solutions for companies without the capacity to do so themselves, with a focus on communications, CRM, and accountancy solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Solution design, pricing, and sales.

On-site delivery and project management

Following graduation from Dartmouth Christopher was assigned after further training in bridge watch keeping initially to HMS Boxer and later HMS Cumberland.

Key Responsibilities

Bridge watch keeping.

Boarding officer.

Running a division of forty or so sailors