Stern Investment Management & Research Society

David A. Daigle
Portfolio Manager, Capital Fixed Income Investors | Capital Group

Mr. Daigle is a fixed income portfolio manager at Capital Group. He has 22 years of investment experience, all with Capital Group.  Earlier in his career at Capital, David also had investment analyst responsibilities and covered multiple industries including health care, wireless communications, technology, and transportation.

He holds an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Vermont. David is based in Capital Group’s New York office.




Nicole Delz Lynch
Managing Director, Corporate Ratings | Standard & Poors
 
Nicole Delz Lynch is a Managing Director and Analytical Manager in Corporate Ratings at Standard & Poor’s. She leads Standard & Poor’s U.S. Media and Entertainment Group, and is responsible for managing and providing analytical oversight to a group of analysts within these sectors. Prior to joining the Media & Entertainment group in late 2014, Nicole was analytical manager for recovery ratings analytics efforts for the Commodities, Materials and Real Estate sectors during 2014. Nicole was also previously an analytical manager of the Consumer Products Group within Standard & Poor’s Corporate Ratings for almost nine years, responsible for managing a group of Consumer Products companies analysts within the food, beverage and durables sectors, having spent the previous ten years as the primary analyst for companies in the tobacco and beverage sectors.

Prior to joining Standard & Poor’s in 1995, Nicole spent over ten years at JP Morgan, the last five of which was spent as a credit analyst in Global Credit Research. In her capacity as a vice president in Global Credit Research, Nicole had analytical responsibility for companies within the aerospace and transportation sectors. Prior to joining Global Credit Research, she was an audit officer in JP Morgan’s internal audit department.

Nicole holds a B.A. in Sociology from Boston College and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Graduate School of Business at Fordham University.

 


Zayd Hammam
Founder and CIO | Gansett Companies

Zayd Hammam is the Founder and CIO of Gansett Companies, a New York-based distressed private credit investment firm.  Prior to founding Gansett, Zayd was a Principal at Atalaya Capital Management, a $3 billion credit opportunity fund. He began his financial career as a special situations analyst at Mentor Partners and Société Générale Asset Management.  Zayd is also a Partner at Rhino Investment Management, a London-based specialized real estate debt investment firm.  Zayd graduated from the University of Pennsylvania where he received degrees in Electrical Engineering (Moore School) and Finance (Wharton).




Sumit Roy
Magnetar Capital

Sumit Roy works in the Fixed Income business at Magnetar Capital, a multi-strategy alternatives asset manager headquartered in Evanston, IL with more than USD 13 billion in AUM.  Prior to joining Magnetar Capital in 2012, Mr. Roy was a Portfolio Manager in charge of global macro strategies (in rates, credit, currency and equity markets) at Mizuho Alternative Investments (MAI), a subsidiary of the Mizuho Financial Group.  Prior to joining MAI in 2009, he was a Principal at JWM Partners from 2005 to 2008, where he was responsible for relative value and directional strategies in credit and structured credit (including ABS and ABS related CDOs). Mr. Roy was Head of Global Credit Derivatives and co-Head of Global Structured Credit Products at Citigroup from 2000 to 2005, where he was responsible for global CDS trading, corporate credit and ABS correlation businesses, hybrid CDOs in ABS and leveraged loans, repackaging and miscellaneous structuring.  Prior to this, Mr. Roy founded and ran the Global Emerging Markets Derivatives business at Salomon Brothers/Citigroup, which pioneered the use of credit derivatives as risk transfer instruments.  He joined the interest rate derivatives group at Salomon Brothers in 1992 after spending five years at Deutsche Bank, where he structured and traded interest rate derivatives. He serves on the Board of Managers of ICE Clear Credit, LLC, an institution set up to provide a central clearing facility for credit default swaps.

Mr. Roy holds a BA (Honours) in Economics from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi and an MBA (with Distinction) from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School.




Bjorn Flesaker
Director of Quantitative Research, Fixed Income | Lord Abbett 
 
Bjorn Flesaker is Director of Quantitative Research, Fixed Income, for Lord Abbett & Co. LLC, where he is responsible for developing quantitative models and techniques to conduct portfolio risk analysis and security valuation for their fixed-income portfolios. Mr. Flesaker joined Lord Abbett & Co. LLC in 2017. His prior experience includes serving as Managing Director, Head of Quantitative Research at Prudential Fixed Income. Previously, he worked in fixed income R&D and business management at Bloomberg L.P., and he managed derivatives oriented quant groups for several institutions, including Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, UBS Securities and Merrill Lynch. He currently serves as Managing Editor of the International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance.

He earned a Master of Management degree in finance from BI Norwegian Business School and a Ph.D. in finance from the University of California, Berkeley.




Steven Karpel
Managing Director | Blackrock
 
Steven Karpel, CFA, Managing Director, is on the Multi-Sector team within Global Fixed Income focused on high yield alpha strategies.  In this role, he manages the high yield allocations in a number of BlackRock’s multi-sector fixed income funds. 
 
Prior to joining BlackRock, he spent 12 years at Credit Suisse, where he was a Managing Director, Pod Head, and Senior High Yield and Distressed Research Analyst. He was primarily responsible for sector coverage of the Energy Sector, but also had previous and concurrent responsibilities for the Healthcare, Industrials, and Chemicals sectors. Steven began his career at MetLife Investments as a research analyst supporting a $200 billion fixed income portfolio.
 
He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and International Business from the University of Maryland, College Park and an MBA from Columbia Business School and is a CFA charter holder.