Management Team

Peter Cotton (CEO)

Peter Cotton brings ten years experience modeling credit derivatives. Prior to Julius Finance, Peter was responsible for several innovations in credit derivatives including the first closed form basket pricer at Morgan Stanley. His simple to use trading tools were widely adopted within the firm and during the rapid growth phase of the Morgan Stanley synthetic CDO business his uniquely computed valuations were used by the New York Structured Products Group on a regular basis. Having pioneered Copula and hybrid models for cash and synthetic CDO valuation, Peter identified various model inefficiencies and in 2005 led a research project dedicated to next generation correlation trading tools. This effort drew together leading academic experts in finance, mathematics and statistics. In 2006 Peter joined the Structured Credit Products group and designed a capital model for credit derivative product company Cournot Financial Products LLC.

Yakov Kanter (President)

Yakov Kanter has been modeling and, most recently, trading fixed income exotic derivatives for eight years prior to joining Julius Finance. Over that period he developed the first credit basket library at Gen Re Securities, participated in the development of the next generation MBS prepayment model at Morgan Stanley and developed Morgan Stanley’s first joint credit and interest rate model. He was one of the architects of the next generation analytics library at Morgan Stanley and since 2007 has been modeling and trading credit and insurance hybrids. Prior to his work on Wall Street, Dr Kanter has been a J.F. Ritt Assistant Professor at the Columbia University Mathematics Department.

Nicholas de Jong (Vice President Engineering and Operations)

Previously as Co-Founder and Chief Information Officer of Sensory Networks Inc. Mr. de Jong played a fundamental role in growing Sensory Networks from a simple idea to a worldwide 70+ employee OEM technology company with offices in Palo Alto, Sydney, Beijing and London. Mr. de Jong is a proven start-up entrepreneur having conceived the original idea for Sensory Networks teamed with others to establish Sensory as a venture funded company with funds from, Deutsche Bank Capital Partners, Xilinx Inc., Jafco Investments (Asia), Technology Venture Partners and Individuals Venture Fund. Mr. de Jong additionally has an extensive background in computer and network security. In Mr. de Jong's role as Chief Security Analyst at Securify he managed the roll out of the SecurVantage Policy Monitoring System to large enterprises across a range of industries, particularly Finance & Banking.

Matt Barrie (Board)

Matt Barrie is a serial entrepreneur as founder and CEO of Sensory Networks Inc., the leading developer of OEM high performance network security processors, and cofounder of Dilithium Networks Inc., the global leader in converged video solutions for mobile and broadband networks. At Sensory, Mr. Barrie took the company from its genesis to over 70 employees, operating in four locations worldwide and supplier to vendors of network and security equipment including McAfee, LG, Astaro and others. Mr Barrie has raised over $27M USD in financing from venture capital, strategic investors and through government grants. Mr. Barrie is also a consulting lecturer at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Sydney. Mr. Barrie holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, California and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. In 2006, Mr. Barrie was awarded the State Pearcey Award for contribution to the ICT industry.

Doug Vestal (Senior Quantitative Analyst)

Prior to joining Julius Finance, Doug Vestal completed his Ph.D. in Statistics and Applied Probability at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His dissertation is on developing new numerical techniques for pricing credit derivatives. During his graduate studies, he was supported by a NSF grant bringing together researchers from UCSB, Princeton University, and UT Austin, to study new modeling techniques in credit derivatives pricing. While a graduate student, he interned at UBS Investment Bank, Progress Energy, and SAS Institute. At UBS, he was responsible for devising a new calibration procedure that was used for the risk management of fixed income and FX products. While at Progress Energy, he created a new Value-at-Risk modeling framework for a commodities trading book. While at SAS Institute, he worked on their collection of risk products. In addition, he has also provided consulting work for a large investment bank on the risk management of exotic fixed income derivatives and a private fixed income company that manages over ten billion in assets. He also holds a M.S. in Financial Mathematics and a B.S. in Mathematics.