Michael (Mike) Simmons is a specialist in the field of financial services operations; he has been involved with the capital markets and operations throughout his career. During his career within stockbroking firms and within a major international investment bank (S.G. Warburg and Warburg Securities), Mike gained hands-on experience of and day-to-day management responsibility for many operational areas (including debt, money markets and equity), and for various operations functions across both domestic and international markets. Since 1995, he has been writing and delivering training programs to audiences of mixed vocation and experience, including operations staff, front-office personnel, compliance and risk officers, legal personnel, consultants and IT professionals. Such programs include securities operations (incorporating the trade lifecycle), repos and related collateral, securities lending & borrowing and related collateral, corporate actions (fundamental and intermediate), derivative operations (exchange-traded derivatives, OTC derivatives (including CDS & IRS) and related collateral) and related central clearing under EMIR, loan syndication (primary & secondary markets), clearing & settlement, fails & fails management, end-to-end process flow, and risks & controls in operations. Mike’s training programmes have been delivered in the UK, US, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Irish Republic, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia,Singapore and Tunisia. Mike has delivered over 1400 training courses to investment banks, fund managers, asset managers, sovereign wealth funds, supranational organisations, management consultants, central securities depositories, custodians, central counterparties, software companies and data vendors. A particular feature of Mike’s courses is the emphasis placed on risks within operations, and the associated controls.