Dr. Ken Baldwin has worked as a practitioner in banking and finance for over 25 years in senior positions spanning the front and middle offices. Having graduated from Oxford University with a first-class honors degree in Physics in 1989, he qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PWC, before joining UBS, and then later Credit Suisse, in derivatives risk and control functions based in London.

He gained a PhD in microeconomics, and worked in the GCC for 15 years in retail and investment banks. Whilst at Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, Dr. Ken built an ALM analytic technology platform capable of capturing liquidity and interest rate risks inherent in the many varied financing products used at retail and corporate levels. He then moved to take up the position of MENA Regional Head of Quantitative Analysis for Citigroup. At Citicorp, Dr. Ken worked on structuring complex derivatives products used by Gulf-regional corporations to hedge FX and interest rate risks. Still residing in Bahrain, Dr. Ken then joined Investcorp, where he worked on the risk due diligence of corporate private equity and real estate private equity transactions and portfolio management. After leaving Investcorp, he set up the risk management department for venture capital bank, providing Basel III compliance and deal analysis for the bank. He then operationalized a new Islamic investment bank as its Chief Operating Officer for 3 years, before his most recent industry role at the Islamic Development Bank, where he set up and ran a new department tasked with developing financial policies and risk-based pricing of the bank’s Islamic financing products. Dr. Ken is currently an Assistant Professor of Finance in the UK. He has published quantitative finance articles in peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of International Financial Markets Institutions and Money, and the Journal of Risk, and during his earlier career, taught CFA and FRM professional certifications as a pastime for the Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance.