International Financial Standards Conference

Jennie Baisch is working as a Securities Expert at Swift and leads the securities initiatives for various markets in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Together with the Swift account managers, she supports the Swift community on all securities related topics. Based in Frankfurt, she has a good overview of developments in the securities market in Germany. Therefore she is representing Swift at various conferences speaking about the use of standards and how Swift can support the community in implementing them.

Sassan Danesh is Chief Executive Officer of Etrading Software, the independent, global provider of technology-led solutions designed to assist financial institutions and industry initiatives to address the highly complex and constantly evolving market and regulatory challenges. Sassan’s focus at Etrading Software is on the role of technology in addressing industry-wide issues and he is passionate about the benefits of industry collaboration to create critical market infrastructures that optimise inefficiencies in the industry.

He has 20 years‘ experience assisting capital markets institutions to grow their OTC market franchise by optimising the business performance of their technology offerings. Sassan is a member of the Financial Services Committee of the British Standards Institution (BSI), assisting in defining electronic standards for the UK financial services industry. He is also a member of the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO), assisting in the creation of electronic standards for the global financial services industry.

Prior to co-founding Etrading Software, Sassan worked at JP Morgan for 11 years, building technology solutions to support the fixed income sales and trading businesses.

Detlef Fechtner studied politics, economics, history and European studies in Frankfurt and Brussels. After research stays in the USA (Cornell, Harvard), South Africa and Ukraine, he began his journalistic career with the news wire vwd (now Dow Jones Germany). Later, he worked as editor with Frankfurter Rundschau and WAZ media group before he moved to Börsen-Zeitung as Brussels correspondent. From 2021 until 2024, he has been editor-in-chief of Börsen-Zeitung. Today he is its head reporter.

Francis Gross is Senior Adviser in the Directorate General Statistics of the European Central Bank.

Francis’ work pursues one goal: effective measurement of the economic and financial system as technology keeps growing exponentially, a necessary condition for control and stability – name it “sustainable digitalisation”.

He focuses on two interfaces: (1) globally integrated, fast, tightly coupled economic system vs. fragmented, slow regulatory system, (2) “real” world vs. data world, the core of digitalisation. His method: (1) identify constraints and specifications for effective measurement dictated by technology, (2) develop conceptual systemic design that can work sustainably and (3) propose migration paths and concrete, feasible measures with transformational power that can deliver.

Proposals include a global, public-good, digital infrastructure (possibly managed by a new, technical, international institution) making the system adequately measurable, safer, and more efficient, building on the Global LEI System as a first step.

2006 Francis initiated the movement that led to the G20-backed Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) System, where he served on the Regulatory Oversight Committee. Before joining the ECB in 2001, Francis spent fifteen years in automotive, eight at Mercedes, working on globalisation.

He holds an engineering degree from École Centrale, Paris, and an MBA from Henley Management College, UK

In his free time, Francis coaches athletes for javelin throwing, including the former World and current European champion in the decathlon.

Emma Kalliomaki is Managing Director of the Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) and the Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB), organisations seeking to foster standardisation within the financial services industry by upholding the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) principles and through promoting use of International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs) and Classification of Financial Instruments codes (CFIs), Financial Instrument Short Names (FISN), and the Unique Product Identifier (UPI).

While Emma has been working as MD, the DSB has been designated by the Financial Stability Board as the sole service provider for the UPI System supporting the G20 initiative to improve data alignment and provide the harmonisation needed for increased monitoring of systemic risks from the global OTC derivatives markets. The UPI Service was launched in October 2023, complementing the OTC ISIN, establishing an OTC derivative identifier framework.

Emma has over 15 years of experience in financial services reference data, standards, and regulation, previously also working as head of the London Stock Exchange’s reference data operations.

Alexandre Kech has been appointed by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) Board of Directors as the CEO, effective June 26, 2024.
Prior to joining GLEIF, Alexandre Kech was Head Digital Securities at the SIX Digital Exchange. As a member of the Executive Board, Alex had full executive responsibility for the Digital Securities business vertical, including relationship management, product and blockchain-based service development, as well as ecosystem expansion.

Over the past 25 years, Alex has constructed a unique career combining finance at BNY Mellon, payments/securities infrastructure and standards at SWIFT, and blockchain and digital assets at Onchain Custodian (ONC) and most recently Citi Ventures. As co-founder and CEO of ONC, Alex led the Singapore and Shanghai-based team that built from scratch a custody and prime brokerage service for crypto and other digital assets. As Blockchain & Digital Asset director at Citi Ventures, he built a team to engage the European ecosystem on emerging use cases for blockchain technologies and digital
assets.

Alex is also involved in industry and standardization initiatives. As the convenor of the ISO TC 68 / SC8 / WG3 which produced the ISO 24165 Digital Token Identifier (DTI), he is a member of the DTI Foundation Product Advisory Committee. He also recently served as co-chair of the Global Digital Finance (gdf.io) custody working group. Alex earned a Bachelor’s degree in translation, and an Executive MBA from the Quantic School of Business and Technology while building Onchain Custodian — putting theory into practice in real-time.

Dominique Tanner

Chairperson ISO/TC 68/SC 8 Reference data for financial services
Head Product Management Reference Data
SIX Financial Information

Dominique Tanner has more than 30 years of experience in the financial information industry working in various roles at SIX Financial Information in Zurich and London. He is currently heading the product management team for reference data and is responsible for the development and the commercialization of this core dataset. Since 2019 Dominique Tanner is also serving as the Chairperson of ISO/TC 68/SC 8 at the International Organization for Standardization. In this role he is leading the standards development efforts of SC 8 Reference data for financial services and is also a member of the strategic leadership group of TC 68 Financial services. Prior to his time in the financial information industry, Dominique Tanner has worked as a software engineering consultant for a Swiss based software development company and as a software engineering specialist at the international IT department of a major Swiss bank. Dominique Tanner holds a masters degree in Business Information Technology from University of Zurich.

Torsten Ulrich studied economics at the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim. After working for several years as a corporate client advisor in the banking sector and subsequently as an investment manager in the venture capital sector, he joined the Stuttgart Stock Exchange in 1999. His responsibilities included marketing, sales and stock exchange systems. Since setting up his own data distribution at the Stuttgart Stock Exchange in 2002, Torsten Ulrich has been responsible for the Information Products division. In his function as Managing Director, he concentrated exclusively on the expansion of this important business area for the Stuttgart Stock Exchange Group between 2013 and 2015. In June 2015, Torsten Ulrich moved to the WM Group. As Managing Director, Mr Torsten Ulrich is responsible for WM Datenservice (sales, business development, taxes). He is also responsible for standardisation with his participations in the Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA), the Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB) and the Identifier Engine Company (IEC). Furthermore, Mr Ulrich holds the position of Chairman on the ANNA Board and is a member of the DSB Board and the IEC Board.

Studierte Wirtschaftswissenschaften an der Universität Stuttgart-Hohenheim. Nach einer mehrjährigen Tätigkeit als Firmenkundenbetreuer im Bankbereich und einer anschließenden Tätigkeit als Investment Manager im Venture Capital Bereich wechselte er 1999 zur Börse Stuttgart. Seine Zuständigkeiten umfassten u.a. Marketing, Vertrieb, und Börsensysteme. Seit dem Aufbau der eigenen Datendistribution bei der Börse Stuttgart in 2002, war Torsten Ulrich verantwortlich für den Bereich Informationsprodukte. In seiner Funktion als Managing Direktor konzentrierte er sich zwischen 2013 und 2015 ausschließlich auf den Ausbau dieses für die Gruppe Börse Stuttgart wichtigen Geschäftsfeldes. Im Juni 2015 wechselte Torsten Ulrich zur WM Gruppe. Herr Torsten Ulrich ist als Geschäftsführer zuständig für den WM Datenservice (Verkauf, Business Development, Steuern). Ferner ist er verantwortlich für die Standardisierung mit seinen Beteiligungen an der Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA), dem Derivatives Service Bureau (DSB) sowie der Identifier Engine Company (IEC). Des Weiteren hält Herr Ulrich die Position als Chairman im ANNA Board inne und ist Mitglied im DSB Board sowie im IEC Board.