Credit Risk Conference

Head of global corporate ratings group, covering non-financial corporates. Fitch’s corporate rating work is carried out by more than 350 dedicated corporate analysts, based in 22 cities around the world, and also covers all aspects of the rating and surveillance of upwards of 2,000 non-financial corporations across the globe, rating over $10 trillion of debt. Beyond ratings, the group also publishes timely commentary on different sector trends, scenario analyses for industries and individual companies, issuer forecasts, commodity price decks and loan and bond performance across regions.

Markus is the Chief Economist of Dun & Bradstreet and is based in the company’s London office. He holds a Diploma in Economics with a specialisation in labour markets, monetary policy and European economics.In 2009, he obtained a Robert Schuman Scholarship in the European Parliament where he worked for the Committee for Economic and Monetary Affairs, as well as assisting in the Monetary Dialogue between the Parliament and the European Central Bank.After a stint as academic research assistant at the University of Würzburg, he joined Dun & Bradstreet’s Country Insight Services in the UK as a Country Risk Analyst in 2010. In this role, he is covering the UK, France and his home country Germany, combining the company’s vast micro-economic data with his macroeconomic and political expertise. Since 2016 he has been one of Dun & Bradstreet’s media spokespersons. In this role, he has featured in newspapers and magazines many times and has also participated in interviews on national television. In addition, he regularly speaks in front of domestic and international audiences.

Valentin LAZEA is Chief Economist of the National Bank of Romania, as well as President of the Board of TranFonD SA. He attended advanced courses at renowned institutions, such as: IMF Institute, Washington DC, USA, Sussex University, Brighton, Great Britain, Istituto Giordano dell'Amore, Milan, Italy.

He is a founding member and President of the Steering Committee of the Romanian Center for Economic Policies (CEROPE).

He has published numerous studies and specialized books as an author or co-author, such as: ``Conditionalities in the financial-banking field for Romania's admission to the EU``, CEROPE, 1999; ``Estimating the Balassa-Samuelson effect in Romania``, CEROPE, 2003; ``Rural development and agricultural reform in Romania``, CEROPE, 2004; ``Ways of measuring the quasi-fiscal deficit in Romania``, CEROPE, 2005; „Environmental taxes in Romania’, CEROPE, 2006; ``Structural changes in the Romanian economy after integration``, CEROPE, 2007; ``Prioritizing EU policies in the process of reviewing the Community budget``, CEROPE, 2012; co-author of ``The EU and Romania: Accession and Beyond``, The Federal Trust, London, 2006; co-editor and co-author of the volume “Structural changes and economic performance in Romania”, IRLI Publishing House, Bucharest, 2003; editor of the volume “Economic growth and convergence”, Ed. Mustang, Bucharest, 2008. He also participated in three technical assistance programs for the National Forecast Commission, the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister's Office, financed by PHARE funds (2001-2007 ).

UniCredit Bank Romania is a member of UniCredit, a leading European bank, and one of the traditional providers of factoring, forfeiting and supply chain financing solutions. With close to 20 years of experience in the financial sector, Alecsandra started in UniCredit Leasing Romania as Senior Relationship Manager. In 2007, she joined the Bank’s team, specializing in receivables management and financing. She has been representing UniCredit Bank S.A. in the Romanian Factoring Association Board of Directors since its establishment.

Apostolos Tsoubris is the Executive Director and global head of the Management Consulting Practice of ICAP Group. ICAP Management Consultants provide solutions and services globally with specialization in Customer Strategy, Risk Management & Finance, Operational Excellence and Sales & Marketing. A strong team of business consultants and technology experts combine business consulting and innovative technologies resulting to a unique value proposition. Apostolos previously worked for many International solution provider companies & their partners like Sungard, Fiserv, FUNDTech, Unisys, IBM etc.
During his 28 year career he has delivered consulting services and complex technology projects to most Banks and Firms like Alpha Bank, Eurobank, Piraeus Bank, Praxia Bank, Optima Bank, Emporiki Bank, Credit Agricole, National Bank of Greece, First Data Hellas (Sia) to name a few.
Apostolos is specialized in Credit Risk Management, Customer Loyalty and Analytics, Digital Transformation and Big Data & Analytics. He leads teams specialized in Strategy & Business Consulting, Business Process Management, Corporate Performance Management and Compliance. He is the CEO of Comply.Data, a 100% ICAP Company specialized in Compliance. Apostolos has an excellent domain knowledge in Banking, Telco and Retail business. He holds a Bachelor degree with highest distinction in Computer Engineering, and Masters in Artificial Intelligence, Polytechnic School of Engineering, University of Patras. During his professional career, Apostolos has been trained in different phases of the Adizes program for organizational transformation (Worldwide Leading methodology for accelerating organizational change).

Myrto Kyriakidou is Executive Director of the Credit Risk Services at ICAP and responsible for the function of ICAP as a Credit Rating Agency.
Prior to ICAP, she was Director of the Portfolio Analytics Department of Qualco, leading a team of experts who evaluated and designed credit & collections strategies, based on data mining findings and risk modelling. She has held a Risk Analytics consultancy position at National Bank of Greece (NPL Division), contributing to the improvement of Credit and Collections processes. As Head of Statistical Decisions Hellas, she analyzed and evaluated credit portfolios for leading Retail Banks. Her first position was actuary at Interamerican Property & Casualty Insurance Company S.A.

Melina Skouridou is an Assistant Vice President and lead analyst for EMEA financial institutions, with a focus in Central and South Eastern Europe. In this role, she currently provides ratings analysis for a portfolio of banks in Hungary, Romania and Slovenia. Prior to that she covered Norwegian and Cypriot banks, as well as financial institutions in Egypt, Israel and Bulgaria. This included large private, public, and state affiliated banks; small and mid-sized commercial lenders, and government-related institutions.

Melina joined Moody’s Limassol office in 2006, and started her Moody’s tenure covering financial institutions operating in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Prior to joining Moody’s, she worked as analyst for a local investment management firm conducting analysis for various securities and participating in the investment decision process.

Melina has an MSc Financial Mathematics from King’s College, University of London and a BSc Mathematics from the same school. She earned her CFA designation in 2009.

Christian Berger is Practice Leader for Trade Credit in Marsh’s Central and South Eastern European region, encompassing activities in 17 diverse markets from the Baltics to Israel. Christian is based in Vienna and manages, among other things, the links of the regional trade credit teams with the wider Continental European and Global Marsh Trade Credit Practice.

Before joining Marsh in 2016, Christian spent 17 years as a manager at Coface, where he was responsible for the establishment of the trade credit network in Central Europe. During his career at Coface he held numerous CEE regional as well as national management positions, including the country manager of Austria and the Czech Republic.

Haris Linardakis is the IBM cloud leader, Greece and Cyprus since 2015. Within his role, he is helping enterprises of all sizes in Greece and Cyprus to assess cloud readiness, develop cloud adoption strategies and power their digital transformation.

Throughout his career in IBM, he held business development positions in global technology services and enterprise business unit. As a professional, he is committed to deliver business value through technological advancement and innovative thinking. His main interests include cloud platforms and services, business analytics, internet of things, cognitive applications and agile application development.

Haris’ academic background includes electrical and computer engineering degree and a PhD degree in telecommunications, both from the National Technical University of Athens. He has published and participated in research programmes in the area of medium access control protocols in Optical Networks.

Adrian Vasilescu started as a journalist and has more than 57 years of uninterrupted journalistic career for newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Until 1996 he was associate professor at the Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest University and the Higher School of Journalism, followed by occupying several key positions in the National Bank of Romania: coordinator of the communication strategy, part of the team of counselors to the governor of NBR and currently NBR Strategy Counselor. In 2000 he was a member of the government, in the team of advisers of the Prime Minister, at that time Mugur Isarescu.

Mr. Adrian Vasilescu has weekly financial headings in Romanian newspapers, interviews and reviews in numerous other publications and has been awarded numerous awards for his activity.

Dr George Christodoulakis is a member of the ICAP Board of Directors, an academic at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, a financial advisor and entrepreneur. He has served as the State Secretary for Asset Restructuring and Privatizations of Greece, Advisor to the Governor of the Bank of Greece, member of the Hellenic Corporate Governance Council, as well as an academic at Cass Business School of City, University of London. His expertise concentrates on credit and market risk, financial forecasting and regulation, he has published widely in research journals and books and has edited the book Managing Risks in the European Periphery Debt Crisis, Palgrave Macmillan 2015 and co-edited The Analytics of Risk Model Validation, Elsevier 2008 and the Journal of Risk Model Validation, Risk Journals 2006.

Marcella Antolini’s prime focus during her career has been in retail banking, primarily involved in credit risk, fraud prevention and process optimization, focusing on improving the performance of credit and risk functions for International, Strategic Clients.