Franck Risler, Ph.D.

Franck Risler, Ph.D. is a Senior Managing Director and leader of the Securities, Commodities and Derivatives practice. He assists clients on a wide range of transactional, advisory and contentious matters involving securities, commodities and derivatives. Dr. Risler is a member of the LIBOR Transition Task Force and is the co-developer of Quantum, FTI Consulting’s proprietary analytics and risk management flagship technology solution.

Dr. Risler combines deep industry expertise and academic rigor. He has traded global markets, built and managed leading trading businesses and advised on high-profile transactions and litigation in global capital markets and commodity industries. Dr. Risler has been appointed to the Expert Panel of P.R.I.M.E. Finance.

Dr. Risler brings more than 25 years of experience in trading, quantitative investment, risk management and financial technology across asset classes (e.g. commodity, equity, interest-rate, FX, credit and cryptocurrencies) both on the sell-side and the buy-side. He has a proven track record of building and managing successful risk-controlled derivatives trading and investment businesses, leading and managing changes as a member of global management committees and developing cutting-edge trading infrastructure with an emphasis on innovation applied to trading tools, risk management methods, structuring as well as analytics and technology.

Dr. Risler’s work includes independent expertise and testimony in disputes, litigation and arbitration; complex valuation matters including structured derivatives and customized business valuation; transactions (e.g. M&A) and restructuring advisory; risk management and derivatives hedging advisory; business transformation; integrated due diligence; independent business review; and quantitative solutions. His clients are brokers dealers, asset managers, hedge fund managers, private equity firms, regulators, legislators, brokers, commodity traders, energy companies (including upstream, midstream and downstream operators), as well as mining and metal processing firms.

Prior to FTI Consulting, Dr. Risler was the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Laplace, a derivatives-focused global macro hedge fund. Prior to that, he held several critical and essential trading roles at CIBC, including but not limited to: Global Head of Interest-Rate Derivative Trading and member of the Fixed-Income and Currencies management committee, Head of Equity Derivatives Trading Europe and Asia (franchise and proprietary businesses), Co-Global Head of Commodity Trading and Global Head of Equity Exotics Trading and Hybrid Derivatives Trading. He started his trading career at Lehman Brothers (in equity derivatives).

A major focus for Dr. Risler at CIBC was the control and design of all derivatives trading technology and analytics undertaken by the bank in every asset class and location, leading to a unique merging of all pricing and risk management onto a single firm-wide infrastructure. In particular, the advanced trading system that he developed became (and still is) CIBC’s trading and risk management system in place for all derivatives businesses for all asset classes globally.

Dr. Risler holds a PhD in Numerical Mathematics (with highest honors) from the Ecole Normale Superieure Paris-Saclays and a MSc in Management of the ESSEC Business School. He has published several papers on applied numerical mathematics in leading international scientific journals (e.g. Contemporary Mathematics, Numerical Algorithms and the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering). Dr. Risler was the 1997 Winner of the Seymour Cray Prize for Numerical Mathematics and High-Performance Computing.