Akshay Kumar
BNP Paribas
Akshay Kumar leads BNP Paribas’ global markets division in India, overseeing its performance and managing relationships with stakeholders such as regulators, government officials and clients.
He joined BNP Paribas in 2011 and assumed the role of head of institutional sales in 2019. He brings over 17 years of experience from Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ and ICICI Bank, specialising in fixed income and currency markets/instruments.
Kumar has a post-graduate degree in business management from XLRI, Jamshedpur and a bachelors degree in technology from IIIT Allahabad.
Deepak Sood
Alpha Alternatives
Deepak Sood is partner at Alpha Alternatives and leads the fixed income business leveraging expertise gained over a career spanning more than 25 years. His experience encompasses trading in local and regional fixed income markets with specialisation in portfolio construction, restructuring, and hedging strategies across rates, credit, and currency markets.
Sood played a key role in managing Barclays Bank’s macro and credit trading business in India and Singapore, actively promoting India fixed income products and structured credit trades, and facilitating their distribution in local and regional markets. He also spent over three years at Axis Bank overseeing fixed income – rates and treasury.
Hetal Kotak
NSE International Exchange IFSC
Hetal Kotak is a chartered accountant with over 20 years of experience in capital markets, with expertise in fixed income markets. She is presently head of listings at NSE International Exchange IFSC, in GIFT IFSC.
As well as the core work area of fixed income, Kotak is also responsible for new product development at the Exchange and works closely with regulators and market intermediaries.
In her previous roles she worked with India International Exchange IFSC for over five years and BSE for over 10 years in the fixed income segment in charge of primary market and secondary market functions.
Sandip Shah
GIFT City
Sandip Shah is head of the International Financial Services Centre department at GIFT City and has over 13 years of professional experience.
He has been involved with IFSC since its beginning and led various initiatives to develop and promote IFSC globally, bringing domestic and international financial institutions to GIFT City. Shah works closely with IFSC Authority to develop new lines of business such as aircraft leasing, international bullion exchange and offshore fund management.
He previously worked with HSBC in the securities market vertical and National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) at Mumbai between 2010 to 2015.
Krishna Merchant
IFR Asia (Moderator)
Krishna Merchant is senior reporter at IFR Asia, where she has worked since May 2016 covering onshore and offshore credit markets. Before joining IFR, she covered the banking sector and equity markets for Mark to Market at the financial daily Mint. She has worked as a senior correspondent at Business Standard and as a producer for market hour shows at Bloomberg TV.
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