Our Team

A published research mathematician, Extel and Reuters rated #1 analyst (for three consecutive years), exotic derivatives trader and hedge fund manager, Bob is widely considered to be a thought leader in the financial community. Former Merrill Lynch MD and Treasury Select Committee advisor, Bob has been at the forefront of research, product development and fund management in the UK for over 30 years.

Bob has considerable experience of coal-face asset management, having run multi-asset hedge portfolios of well over EUR 8Bn AUM. Bob is often asked to provide his expert opinion, appearing on both BBC TV and BBC Radio as well as in the financial media, and has written many articles for the FT and Risk Magazine. Bob now maintains a lower profile, focusing solely on Protean’s client base.

Bob’s strong academic background, allied with his long-standing experience in the trading and hedge fund community, enable him to deliver (to a broader investor base) products specifically designed to access and exploit the macro economic strategies of today’s top flight institutional fund and investment managers.

Mike started his career in retail banking where he was responsible for fixed income trading, product development and balance sheet risk management. From here he was recruited to the equity-linked product group at Merrill Lynch where he spent seven years before moving to head the UK & Ireland derivative product teams at Deutsche, DrKW and ABN AMRO.

Mike has always been at the forefront of new investment concepts and has a uniquely broad and deep expertise in the underlying derivatives, implementation and UK regulatory and taxation environment. He is a proven innovator and has been behind a number of industry-leading delivery vehicles.

With clients ranging from family offices and wealth managers to pension funds and insurance companies, Mike is aware of the many issues facing both High Net Worth and institutional investors.

Chris has extensive experience in derivatives and structured products at both Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas and as a top-down asset allocator and a bottom-up equity research analyst.

Over the last ten years Chris specialised in strategic asset allocation, tactical asset allocation and security-selection, principally at Seven Investment Management - as Chief Investment Officer. Chris led a team pioneering the use of low-cost, passive investments in multi-asset portfolios.

Prior to his career on the buy-side, Chris worked in investment banking, specialising in structured products at Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas. While at BNP Paribas, Chris also led the bank’s equity research team for the media industry. He started his career in the Corporate Finance department of Hambros Bank. Chris is a graduate of Oxford University.

Arafat has over twenty years’ experience in compliance having spent eight years at the Financial Service Authority (FSA), where he worked on projects such as developing the UK’s permissions regime prior to the FSA taking over from the previous SROs which included IMRO, PIA and the SFA as a result of the UK’s Financial Services Markets Act 2000 coming into force in 2001. He also worked in the Market Risk team where he reported on such topics as the US subprime debt issue and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralised debt obligations (CDO) which triggered the financial crisis of 2007/2008.

Having left the FSA, he went on to work for a number leading financial institutions including Royal Bank of Canada Private Wealth Management Limited, where he worked on implementing MiFID 1; Permal Investments Management Ltd, where he was responsible for implementing the groups compliance programme across the UK, Europe, Middle East and Asia and John Laing Capital Management Limited

Oliver started his career with Protean in 2014. His focus has primarily been on product development and financial analysis.

Oliver graduated with a Masters in Finance and Economics from the LSE. He is fluent in both English and Swedish.