Focus Day Sustainability

Virtual Focus Day - part of the Derivatives Forum Frankfurt 2023

24 November 2022

Carbon Markets, sustainable financial and energy derivatives, sustainable transition or climate targets; sustainability as a focal point is here to stay!

This Focus Day aims to provide a holistic overview of what institutional investors need to cover across asset classes when truly focusing on sustainability. Our guest of honor, Joschka Fischer, Former Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany, will share his views on how to reconcile business, climate and politics in 2023. Further completing this insightful Focus Day will be three shorter panels, a fireside chat and an interview.

We are pleased to have BNP Paribas and Eurosif as partners and sponsors.

Sustainability & Derivatives will also be a key focus at the Derivatives Forum Frankfurt on 22 & 23 March 2023

Registration

Agenda

Speakers

Joschka Fischer
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice-Chancellor of Germany

The former Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany (1998–2005) led the Green Party in its first participation in government, on both the state (Hesse) and federal levels. From 2006 to 2007, Mr Fischer held a professorship at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (USA). Mr Fischer is a founding partner of Joschka Fischer & Company. 

Thomas Book
Member of the Executive Board, Deutsche Börse

With more than 20 years of industry experience, Thomas Book is one of the pioneers in the field of electronic trading. Having joined Deutsche Börse Group in 1995, he was part of the team that rolled out DTB‘s remote membership concept across Europe and the US. During this time, he was able to gain deep insights into the trading business and the importance of innovation and technology for an exchange. Book also was part of the project that founded Eurex, the first of its kind cross border exchange merger of DTB and Soffex. In 2001, he rounded off his profound industry knowledge with a Ph. D. thesis on "Electronic exchange trading and global markets". Prior to being appointed Member of the Supervisory Board of Eurex Frankfurt AG, Book was CEO of Eurex Frankfurt AG from 2016 until June 2020. Previously, Book already shaped Deutsche Börse‘s clearing business for many years. Appointed to the Eurex Board in 2007, he was Head of Clearing until 2014. In 2013, he assumed the role as CEO of Eurex Clearing AG which he held until 2016. As of 1 July 2018, Book was appointed as Member of the Executive Board, Deutsche Börse AG, responsible for Trading & Clearing. Furthermore, Book is chairing the Management Board of Eurex Deutschland and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of European Energy Exchange AG as well as Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board of 360 Treasury Systems AG and of China Europe International Exchange AG.

Maximilian Horster
Head of ISS ESG

Maximilian Horster is Head of ISS ESG, the ESG arm of ISS – Institutional Shareholder Services. He is leading a global team assisting clients in developing and integrating responsible investing policies and practices through the provision of industry leading solutions and data. Based in Frankfurt/ Germany, Max overseas the unit’s core Data & Analytics, Product and Index offering, the Client Success and Marketing functions as well as ISS’ dedicated climate team that helps financial market participants understand, measure, and act on climate-related risks across all asset classes.  

Max joined ISS in 2017 with the acquisition of the financial industry business of South Pole Group that he had co-founded in 2009. There, Max and team developed the world’s largest database of company-level climate change data and pioneered the development of leading, standardized investment climate screening tools. Prior to this, Max worked at Capital Group Companies in North America, Asia and Europe and has, over the past decade, lead several European Union funded greenhouse gas accounting projects while also advising governments on the matter. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, teaches about ESG at several universities, and publishes regularly on the opportunities and challenges of ESG investing.   

Max holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge/ UK. 

Aleksandra Palinska
Executive Director, Eurosif

Aleksandra Palinska is the Executive Director of Eurosif, the European Sustainable Investment Forum, the leading pan European Sustainable and Responsible Investment association advocating for a more sustainable financial system. It works as a partnership of European national Sustainable Investment Forums (SIFs).

She is a seasoned professional with over ten years of experience in EU public policy and regulation. Her expertise covers sustainable finance, financial markets regulation, company law and corporate governance.

Aleksandra brings a wealth of experience to Eurosif, acquired at Finance Watch – a Brussels-based NGO and expertise centre with a mission to make finance serve society – EFAMA, EuropeanIssuers and BetterFinance, which represent the interests of asset managers, publicly-listed companies and individual investors, respectively.

With an in-depth understanding of how capital markets work, Aleksandra masters the challenges and expectations of the buy and sell side. Having led sustainable finance regulatory workstreams at Finance Watch and EFAMA, she became an expert in that field.

She served as a member of the EFRAG’s Sustainability Reporting Board, helping shape the draft European Sustainability Reporting Standards, and acted as a sherpa on the European Commission’s Platform on Sustainable Finance, where she contributed to the development of the recommendations for a social taxonomy, minimum social and governance safeguards that taxonomy-aligned investments must meet, and the taxonomy-related disclosures.

Aleksandra holds a masters’ degree in management from the University of economics and a post-graduate diploma in European studies.

 


Christina Sell
Chief Sustainability Officer, Trading & Clearing, Deutsche Börse

Christina started her career at Deutsche Börse 2001. Before her promotion as Chief Sustainability Officer Trading & Clearing she headed different teams in the exchange and clearing organization. She believes that collaboration, openness and endurance are required to tackle major challenges. The sustainable transformation is one of them. She studied German literature, political science and history at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main with a degree Magister Artium. 

Tobias Paulun
Chief Strategy Officer, EEX

Dr.-Ing. Dr. Tobias Paulun is a Member of the Management Board of the European Energy Exchange AG (EEX) and also holds further positions within EEX Group. In his role as Chief Strategy Officer he is responsible for the strategy of the EEX Group. A special focus of his tasks is to analyze the political and regulatory environment of the energy markets and energy trading, and to develop new products and services for EEX trading participants. Mr. Paulun has been employed by the EEX Group since August 2009. Previously, he worked as a research group leader at the Institute of Electrical Systems and Energy Economics (IAEW) of the RWTH Aachen in industrial and research projects concerning the long-term development of the European electricity market and optimization of grid expansion planning for electricity and gas networks. "


Anje Stiers
Head of EU Representation Office, EEX

Anje has been working for EEX for eight years a as a financial markets legislation expert. As of this year, she also heads their office in Brussels, leading on EEX’ engagement with European institutions.   

For the last five years she has also been heading the Financial Markets Working Group of Europex, the association of European energy exchanges. Before her time at EEX, she has been serving both as an in-house as well as external advisor to several companies on EU energy policy. Anje has Master degrees in economics, strategic management and philosophy.  

  

Zubin Ramdarshan
Head of Equity and Index Product Design, Eurex

Zubin Ramdarshan was appointed Head of Equity and Index Product Design in 2016.

Zubin has over twenty years’ experience of vanilla and light-exotic derivatives, both OTC and listed exchange products. He joined Eurex from financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald where he was a managing director for the European ETF business. Previously, he spent five years at Jefferies as a managing director and Head of Equity Derivative Trading in London, and prior to that, he held senior level roles at Macquarie Bank and Bear Stearns. Zubin began his career at Deutsche Bank in 1998.

Zubin Ramdarshan received a BSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from The London School of Economics. 

Julia Schieffer
Founder and Editor, DerivSource

Julia Schieffer, is the Founder & Editor of DerivSource.com, a digital publication and online community for derivatives professionals globally. A seasoned journalist, Julia specialises in OTC derivatives pre and post-trade operations, technology (fintech/regtech), risk management and regulation. Prior to starting up DerivSource, Julia wrote for multiple trade publications both in the US and UK and was managing editor for Operations Management, a publication of Institutional Investor News/Euromoney PLC. She was a Board Member for the Women in Listed Derivatives (WILD) group in London from 2011 to 2021.

Will Mitting
Founder and Managing Director, Acuiti

Will is the founder and managing director of Acuiti.io, the management intelligence platform for the derivatives market. Acuiti helps senior executives across the global derivatives market make decisions by providing proprietary insights and indepth analysis of market trends. Will founded Acuiti in February 2019 after 8 years at Euromoney Institutional Investor where he served as Editor and Publisher of FOW and oversaw the merger between FOW and Global Investor becoming managing director of the combined group in October 2016. Prior to joining FOW, he spent 18 months in Malawi where he founded the first magazine publishing company in the Northern Region of the African country to test a thesis that business provided a better route to long term development than aid.