Allan Lane, PhD, Founding Partner

Allan is both a founding partner of Algo-Chain and Twenty20 Investments. Prior to this Allan spearheaded BlackRock’s iShares’ investment research initiative in Europe, working with a number of clients in the portfolio solutions space. Previously he headed up the ETF Product R&D team.

Before joining iShares in 2008, Allan had previously spent 3 years within the Active Fixed Income business at Barclays Global Investors, where he was responsible for building out the investment platform, focusing on a range of trading strategies in the rates and credit arena. Allan has also held a number of senior roles in the investment banking industry, including a period at RBS where he was The Global Head of Quantitative Research, responsible for the models used to value the structured notes product range used by the bank’s equity, rates, credit and fx business lines. In his rookie years in the early 1990s, he learnt the craft of stochastic calculus as a derivatives specialist at Banque Paribas, before being recruited to head up JP Morgan’s Equity Derivatives Models team.

Allan studied Mathematics at Oxford University and Cambridge University before subsequently gaining his PhD in Theoretical Physics at The University of Washington in the US. With his close ties to The Pacific Northwest in the USA, Allan has served on the Board of Regents at the Honors College at Oregon State University, where he is now an Emeritus Member

Irene Bauer, PhD, Founding Partner

Irene is a founding partner of both Algo-Chain and Twenty20 Investments and is a leading specialist in innovative portfolio construction models which control target risk while optimising the portfolio's returns. Previously, Irene has been at iShares, BlackRock, providing portfolio solutions for their Client Group, along with insights gained from a rigorous ETF investment research process. Prior to that, Irene gained experience across all aspects of ETFs while designing and researching new ETF products at iShares, covering the fixed income, equities, commodities & alternatives asset classes.

In her time at Barclays Global Investors Irene worked within the asset allocation team in the Active Fixed Income business, where she applied her expertise to the scientific investment approach of BGI. Her career in the financial services industry started at ABN Amro where she was responsible for the modelling of structured products, specializing in mortgage backed securities.

Irene has a degree in mathematics from the University of Augsburg, Germany, completing her doctorate thesis in numerical mathematics at the University of Heidelberg. After obtaining her PhD, Irene spent a number of years focusing on the commercial development of statistical models and optimisation tools.

Richard Johnston, Wealth Management

Richard brings his wide experience from the Wealth Management Space, serving High Net Worth individuals.

With a career spanning over 25 years, working for some of the UK’s most well-known brand names such as Sainsbury’s & The Royal Bank of Scotland, Richard’s areas of expertise include financial planning advice, specialist tax planning, foreign currency and credit lending & bridging facilities.

Having started with his first role in the financial services industry when he joined National Westminster Bank in 1999, Richard quickly progressed up the ladder taking on a role as a Customer Advisor with The Royal Bank of Scotland.

Since that first step, Richard has taken several key roles at Drummond Private Bank, Totus Capital Ltd, RJ Wealth & Halo Financial Ltd which makes his contribution to the advisory board invaluable.

Nick Jordan, Fund Sales Distribution

Nick is an experienced and successful Director in the Investment Management Industry, a career spanning over 35 years. During his extensive, and varied, career Nick has developed a wide range of client relationships amongst the Wealth Management community within the UK and Ireland.

Having had a successful career in the Building Society environment, reaching a senior management level, Nick moved to County Unit Trusts for two years to develop this ‘greenfield’ opportunity. After County, Nick spent 19 years with Barings being appointed as Director, and Deputy Head of the UK based Mutual Fund Sales Team covering equity ,fixed income and hedge fund strategies across multiple geographies and disciplines.

Moving then as a Director to Resolution Asset management (helping manage the transition to Ignis Asset management) Nick spent nearly nine years developing the multi geography,multi discipline, boutique and inhouse, funds, including hedge funds and an innovative, complex, fixed income fund, before moving latterly to Saracen Fund Managers. At Saracen, Nick was a Director responsible for sales, marketing and increasing Saracen’s footprint across the UK. Upon subsequently establishing his eponymous consultancy, a deep, and enthusiastic commitment with Algo-chain has developed.

James Shanks, Capital Markets

James Shanks is a markets advisor to Algo-Chain providing expertise on trading ETFs, single stocks & futures.

With over twenty-five years’ experience in Capital Markets, James brings a wealth of experience from the institutional equities trading arena and a deep understanding of trading and ETF execution.

Recently James has set up Mandria, a Wealth Manager offering investment solutions to the intermediary space, and oversees the ETF brokerage division at Tavira Securities - a global financial services firm offering brokerage, asset management and wealth management services.

A career that includes working for some of the biggest names in the financial services industry including Schröders Italia, HSBC, ADIA and Sanford Bernstein, James brings a broad understanding of the different needs across different client segments. This includes the private client space that Bernstein coveted, the high standards that comes with the competitive world of the Sovereign Wealth Fund ADIA and from the vantage point of Milan, Italy, working at Schröders, an excellent understanding of Europe's Wealth Management industry.

Mike Kleyn, PhD, Senior Data Scientist

Michael Kleyn is a Data Scientist for Algo-Chain, providing expertise in the processing, manipulation, and analysis of quantitative data for driving and managing investment portfolios.

With over twenty years’ experience in Capital Markets, he brings know-how across several asset classes for the design of algorithms associated with systematic investment.

His career in finance began in Bank Treasury - measuring and monitoring counterparty credit exposure (RBS/AbnAmro). As the industry evolved to become more and more reliant on data and analytics for portfolio management, he moved to research and development of systematic investing on the buy side for large Asset Managers - in Corporate Credit & Credit Derivatives (Barclays, BlackRock) - and in Sovereign Bonds and Global Equities (Schroders).

Mike studied Engineering and Computing at Imperial College and completed a Ph.D. in Computing Science (Graph Languages) at the University of Texas at Austin.

Nick Stalder, Business Development

Nick's extensive career brings 35 years’ brokerage, equity sales & marketing expertise to the business, complimenting his involvement in the Blockchain space where he has been active since 2013.

Initially starting out as a trainee working in 1985 for Schweizerische Depositen & Kreditbank in Zurich, Nick was to first experience life on the floor at the Stock Exchange, which shaped his passion for equity markets over the next 30 years. Re-locating to Frankfurt saw him take a role at Nomura actively involved in bringing Japanese Stocks & Warrants to the German institutional market, before becoming a Regional Director for TIR Securities Limited.

Subsequent roles included senior positions at E*Trade, Mint Equities and Linear Investments, all operating out of London.

As a keen advocate of FinTech, Nick spent time as an Advisory Board Member for the BTL Group Ltd, a Canadian Blockchain technology company developing blockchain solutions for clients across multiple industries, and lead The TS Pharma Group's capital plans to raise capital through issuing Tokens.

Rory Saldanha, Machine Learning Intern

As an Intern at Algo-Chain, Rory is actively involved in the AI driven portfolio construction project, working across a range of programming languages. Rory has a keen interest in the intersection of mathematical principles and practical financial applications.

Rory's background includes forecasting carbon emissions for companies in the FTSE 100 index. He has also enhanced his data science skills with experience at BlondeMoney, analysing large-scale COVID-19 mobility datasets. At BlondeMoney, Rory utilized Python and R for data processing and visualization, demonstrating his aptitude for transforming complex data into insightful and readily comprehensible information.

Rory earned his Master’s degree in Integrated Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the University of Bath in 2023, where he specialized in machine learning. This focus led him to exploring various machine learning projects since then, further developing his ML skills. Rory is an Associate Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

To this we can add Rory's love of sports, particularly football as well as music where the saxophone is his instrument of choice.

Jacob Guan, Buisness Development Intern

As an Intern at Algo-Chain, Jacob is a member of the business Development team, working on building out and developing the next generation of sales & marketing tools.

Jacob's experience includes his role as a quantitative summer analyst working for Haitong Securities in Shanghai, China, where he utilized polynomial regression, along with other techniques, to build mathematical models forecasting stocks and indexes. Prior to that, Jacob worked as sales intern for Minmetals Securities and CITIC Securities in Qingdao, China, compiling curated weekly news updates and providing ad-hoc research for his business unit.

Jacob is also co-founder and Director of ET Education, an organization that provides a curriculums in Maths, Physics and English for a Summer Camp aimed at students from China, looking to study at universities in the UK.

Currently Jacob is on a gap year while studying Mathematics as an undergraduate at Keble College, University of Oxford. Should he find some spare time, expect to see him playing either table tennis or chess.