Focus Day Sustainability

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. "