Meet the Macro Hive Team

Bilal Hafeez
CEO & Head of Research

Bilal Hafeez is the Founder and CEO of Macro Hive. He was Global Head of International Fixed Income Strategy at Nomura between 2016 and 2019 and held various senior roles at Deutsche Bank between 2002 and 2015 including Head of Multi-Asset Research, Advisor to the CEO, Head of Asia Research in Singapore and Global Head of Foreign Exchange Research. Bilal started his career at JP Morgan in 1998 and was rated #1 market strategist by Euromoney and Institutional Investor between 2004 and 2013. He pioneered FX investment and smart beta benchmarks and was an Honorary Visiting Professor of Finance at Cass Business School. He studied Economics at St Johns College, Cambridge and has seven cats, four chickens, a beehive and one dog.

Andrew Simon
Chief Operating Officer

Andrew has 25 years in finance on both the buy and sell side. He co-founded Eschaton Opportunities Fund, a $100 million+ hedge fund focused on global thematic value investing. Earlier, he led JP Morgan’s institutional sales business across foreign exchange and emerging markets for Europe. He spearheaded initiatives around tail risk hedging and cross asset structuring. Before this, he ran Lehman’s global derivative sales business, managed the European currency option trading and derivative research business at Deutsche Bank, and started at Cooper Neff/BNP. He credits them for his amazing foundation in finance. Andrew lives in London with his wife Valeria and son Alexander. He loves to ski and dreams of beating Rodger Federer on the tennis court.

Dominique Dwor-Frecaut
Senior Researcher

Caroline Grady
Head of EM Economics

Caroline Grady a global economist at Macro Hive, specialising in emerging markets. Formerly, she was a Senior EM Economist at Deutsche Bank covering Central Europe and other countries within the EMEA region. She has also worked as a Leader Writer at the Financial Times writing the FT View on various macro themes. She started her career at Oxford Economics where she worked on EM Asia and also worked on Asia at BMI Research (now Fitch Solutions). Caroline has an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Mirza Baig
EM Strategy / Senior Macro

Mirza has been researching and trading global FX & rates products for over 19 years. His career boasts affiliations with premier sell-side entities such as Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas, and Deutsche Bank. Moreover, his invaluable expertise from the buy-side perspective at Point 72 positions him uniquely in the industry.

Liang Ding
Senior Researcher / China Specialist

I am a multilingual investment professional with over 15 years’ experience as a portfolio manager, quantitative analyst, currency strategist, and China economist. Results-driven, I have an exceptional track record across multiple product lines and business areas, often in challenging market conditions. I am a recognized business builder, having developed new products from scratch at my two most recent employers.

John Tierney
Senior Researcher

Over a 30-year career as a sell side analyst, John covered the structured finance and credit markets before serving as a corporate market strategist. In recent years, he has moved into a global strategist role.

Sam van de Schootbrugge
Research Analyst

Sam is a former UK government economist and researcher at the IFS. He spent nine years studying economics at top academic institutions, including the University of Cambridge, and guest lectures in quantitative methods. At Macro Hive, he leads on developing economic forecasting models, integrating ML methods with traditional econometric analysis. In a past life, Sam represented Great Britain at a European and World level in swimming.

Richard Jones
Research Analyst

Richard Jones has traded and invested in interest rate and FX market portfolios spanning three decades, both on the buy-side and sell-side. He was also an FX & Rates Strategist with Bloomberg News’ Markets Live and First Word products. Currently, Richard is a Macro Strategist for VDK Capital, a London-based venture capital firm.

Henry Occleston
Research Analyst

Henry Occleston is a Strategist who focuses on European markets. Formerly, he worked in European credit and rates strategy at Mizuho Bank, and market strategy at Lloyds Bank. He holds a BA in Economics from Durham University, and an MSc in Economics & Social History from the University of Oxford.

Benjamin Ford
Researcher

Benjamin Ford is a Researcher at Macro Hive. Benjamin studied BSc Financial Mathematics at Cardiff University and MSc Finance at Cass Business School, his dissertations were on the tails of GARCH volatility models, and foreign exchange investment strategies during crises, respectively. He has previously worked as a Summer Research Student at Cardiff University School of Mathematics where he designed the risk pricing model for their £600 million campus developments.

Dalvir Mandara
Quantitative Researcher

Dalvir Mandara is a Quantitative Researcher at Macro Hive. Dalvir has a BSc Mathematics and Computer Science and an MSc Mathematical Finance both from the University of Birmingham. Prior to joining Macro Hive, he worked in the FinTech space applying quantitative analytics, machine learning and high-performance computing methods to investment analytics. His areas of research are in the applications of machine learning, deep learning, and alternative data for predictive modelling of financial markets.

Viresh Kanabar
Research Analyst

Viresh Kanabar is an investment strategist with 8+ years of experience, notably contributing to portfolio construction and risk management at CCLA Investment Management, a £12 billion fund. Viresh was also a voting member of the Investment Committee and ran the private asset valuation process. Before his role at CCLA, Viresh made significant contributions during his three-year tenure as a Consultant at Deloitte, where he was a part of the largest P&C merger in 2016.

Andrew Lofthouse
Senior Sales

Andrew has over 17 years of investment banking experience before joining Macro Hive. His last post saw him as Head of EMEA FICC Sales at Citadel Securities, before this he was Co-Head of Central Bank and Sovereign Wealth Funds at Nomura where he has prior experience covering Central Banks, Supra-sovereign agencies, and government officials at RBS, Santander and Morgan Stanley. Away from Macro Hive, Andrew spends his time with his other passion – wine. He has been an Assistant Winemaker at a vineyard in Devon and is a published wine writer and guest speaker as well as hosting events for wine and cheese. He even holds a Cheese Diploma too!

David Vasey
Chief of Staff

David has spent over 20 years in the Banking sector and most recently was the CAO for the Nomura G10 and EM Foreign Exchange business in EMEA. Prior to Nomura David worked at Lehman Brothers in a variety of Finance roles spanning Real Estate Product Control & Capital Markets MIS. David’s career started at Zurich Financial Services where he qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant.

Pranav Gattani
Sales Operations Analyst

Pranav Gattani is a Sales Operations Analyst at Macro Hive. Prior to this, he was an Associate at Third Bridge Group. Pranav studied Finance and Business at the University of Edinburgh Business School.

Matthew Tibble
Commissioning Editor

Matthew has worked as an editorial consultant and freelance editor for companies such as RiskThinking.AI, JDI Research, and FutureScape248. He holds a PhD in English Literature and formerly held a competitive research fellowship at the University of London. In his free time, he collects rare books and investigates the obscurities of Renaissance literature.

Oliver Neads
Editorial Assistant

Oliver previously worked as a junior editor at Oxford Analytica, an international geopolitical analysis and advisory firm. He holds a BA (Hons) in Modern History from the University of Chichester and an MA in War Studies from King’s College London.

Craig Buckler
Web Technology Engineer

Craig has been a senior web developer for more than 25 years. He’s led award winning online projects for organisations including the UK Parliament, European Parliament, Microsoft, HP, Vodafone, ITN, Sky, The Times, The Guardian, FT.com, The Wall St Journal, and more. Craig is passionate about web technologies and performance and has written many books, articles, and courses. He lives in Devon with his wife Claire and two children and enjoys cycling and motor racing when not tinkering with code.

Iain Wadie
Senior Software Engineer, Macro Hive

Iain Wadie is a Senior Software Engineer at Macro Hive. He has a M.Eng. and Ph.D. from University of Bristol and a MIF from London Business School, as well becoming a Chartered Engineer through his work on European Union funded projects. He brings together extensive experience of software development, systems integration, and associated process re-engineering, with automation, first with physical robots in manufacturing then with small and large systems integration projects at Accenture, running an operations team at Barclays in Group Finance and a consulting practice at Oracle. Having built his first neural network in the ‘90s he is pleased to have returned to the AI space more recently with Intelligent Automation vendors and fintechs, applying RPA and AI to those process tasks which have until recently been beyond the reach of computers.