Edgar Perez is one the world’s few business and technology executives who can light up a room with insightful and inspiring business presentations on the impact of new technologies, from 5G to quantum computing and from artificial intelligence and deep learning to cyber security. A published author and energetic keynote speaker, he is also an international consultant affiliated with Gerson Lehrman Group, Guidepoint Global Advisors, Internal Consulting Group and Capvision.
Edgar has presented in front of thousands of top executives around the world through keynote speeches and both public and in-house corporate training programs on 5G, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, deep learning, cybersecurity and financial trading. He has presented in Beijing, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kiev, Kuala Lumpur, Lima, London, Miami, Naples, New York, Santiago, Sao Paulo, Scott Air Force Base, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Taipei, Warsaw and Washington DC, among other global capitals.
He was a vice president at Citigroup, a senior consultant at IBM, and a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Co. Mr. Perez has an undergraduate degree in Systems Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima, Peru (1994), a Master of Administration from Universidad ESAN, Lima, Peru (1997) and an MBA from Columbia Business School, New York, majoring in Finance and Management (2002).
Previous Experience
Author:He is author of Knightmare on Wall Street, The Rise and Fall of Knight Capital and the Biggest Risk for Financial Markets (2013), and The Speed Traders, An Insider’s Look at the New High-Frequency Trading Phenomenon That is Transforming the Investing World, published in English by McGraw-Hill Inc. (2011), ????, published in Mandarin by China Financial Publishing House (2012), and Investasi Super Kilat, published in Bahasa Indonesia by Kompas Gramedia (2012). He contributes to The New York Times and China’s Sina Finance.
Media: He has been interviewed on CNN‘s Quest Means Business, CGTN’s Business Today and The Point, CNBC‘s Squawk on the Street, Worldwide Exchange, Cash Flow, Street Signs and Squawk Box, FOX BUSINESS‘s Countdown to the Closing Bell and After the Bell, Bloomberg TV‘s Market Makers, CNA’s Asia Now, CNN en Español‘s Dinero, Petersburg - Channel 5, Sina Finance, BNN‘s Business Day, CCTV China, China Radio International, Bankier.pl, TheStreet.com, Leaderonomics, Channel NewsAsia‘s Business Tonight and Cents & Sensibilities.
Clients: Edgar has presented to the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, Vadym Hetman Kyiv National Economic University (Kiev), Quant Investment & HFT Summit APAC (Shanghai), CFA Singapore, Hong Kong Securities Institute, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University and University of International Business and Economics (Beijing), among other public and private institutions. In addition, Mr. Perez has spoken at a number of global conferences, including Institutional Investor’s CEO Roundtable (Berlin) and Global Growth Markets Forum (London), Cyber Security World Conference (New York), Inside Market Data (Chicago), Emerging Markets Investments Summit (Warsaw), CME Group‘s Global Financial Leadership Conference (Naples Beach), Harvard Business School‘s Venture Capital & Private Equity Conference (Boston) and MIT Sloan Investment Management Conference (Cambridge.
Talking Points
The Biggest Risks for Financial Markets
Regulatory changes and technological evolution have transformed the financial landscape since the advent of the first electronic networks in the early 1970s. Regulators around the world are now in a race to respond to the evolution of technology in financial markets and prevent its operational challenges from becoming the biggest risk for financial markets. However, when considering technology and the cyber landscape, errors are bound to happen. Financial services firms are expected to have deployed the most sophisticated defense systems against cyberattacks. Most of them would realize the need of these investments and honestly attempt to implement them, but their IT departments would soon hit a wall. What would it take to limit the impact of the biggest risk for financial markets?
The Biggest Risks for Financial Markets
Social Engineering: The “Weakest Human Link” in Cybersecurity
Social engineering involves tricking your employees into breaching security protocols or giving away information, most often over the telephone or via email. Social engineering exploits human weaknesses rather than technology, preying upon people’s propensity towards trust in particular. Often, these exploits are used to gather information to support a more targeted cyberattack, with the initial forays based on the premise of ‘little and often’ so as not to cause concern. Employees at all levels, including senior executives, are vulnerable. Mr. Perez will explain why by improving employee awareness and introducing simple technical measures, organizations can protect themselves against social engineering techniques and the risk of a cyberattack and its potential impact on business, customers and data.
Social Engineering: The “Weakest Human Link” in Cybersecurity
The Importance of the Cybersecurity Framework for Directors and CEOs
An email embedded with malware. Security systems hacked by thieves. Credit card numbers stolen from store purchases. There’s certainly no shortage of examples when it comes to data security breaches and the havoc they wreak on business. No wonder then that nearly a third of CEOs in KPMG’s latest global survey identified cyber security as the issue having the biggest impact on their companies today. Every organization should apply a Cybersecurity Framework for analyzing cyber security, and ideally it should be integrated into an organization’s existing enterprise risk framework. The key is making it part of the mainstream of risk management within an organization. The most innovative companies today have recognized that cyber security is a customer experience and revenue opportunity, not just a risk that needs to be managed. Mr. Perez will explain why this must done across the entire organization and why the CEO and Board of Directors have the most important role to play.
The Importance of the Cybersecurity Framework for Directors and CEOs
Establishing or Improving a Cybersecurity Program
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework, which was drafted by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), comprises leading practices from various standards bodies that have proved to be successful when implemented, and it also may deliver regulatory and legal advantages that extend well beyond improved cybersecurity for organizations that adopt it early. Its adoption may prove advantageous for businesses across virtually all industries. Mr. Perez will explain why a proper Cybersecurity Program will build on the analysis of the possible areas of concern, an understanding of the company’s most critical assets, and a thorough review of Information Technology’s policies and procedures when faced with cybercrime.
Establishing or Improving a Cybersecurity Program
The Present and Future of High-Frequency Trading
On May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 1,000 points, then its biggest intraday point drop ever. The “Flash Crash” revealed the influence of high-frequency trading to mainstream audiences around the world. In fact, over the past 15 years, the global financial market has fragmented: where there were once three main U.S. exchanges, there are now more than 40 exchanges and alternative trading systems. High-frequency trading companies have largely replaced traditional broker-dealers, using algorithms instead of human traders to make decisions in milliseconds, mostly in response to orders made by other algorithms. Mr. Perez will discuss the benefits brought by technology, making trading faster and more efficient, as well as the potential costs brought upon institutional and retail investors.
The Present and Future of High-Frequency Trading
The Ultimate Business Disruptor: Quantum Computing
Classical computing was invented in the 1940s; the advent of Quantum Computing (QC) will make these computers look painfully slow. Calculations that would take longer than a human’s life span to work out on a classic computer can be completed in a matter of hours or minutes with QC. Furthermore, QC will enable solving a set of problems that couldn’t be solved before. QC’s benefits include efficiently simulating new drug molecules and dramatically reducing the time complex financial calculations take, among many others. For optimization, sampling or search problems, this promises dramatic speedups. Mr. Perez will entertain your audience while revealing why Quantum Computing will disrupt companies in every industry.
The Ultimate Business Disruptor: Quantum Computing
The Artificial Intelligence Breakthroughs that are Changing the World
Artificial intelligence has been referred as the general ability of a computer or robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. Through a comprehensive review of the latest artificial intelligence breakthroughs, Mr. Perez will offer his insights on how these advancements will impact businesses and the human race in general for years to come, and more specifically, how companies can leverage the plethora of available resources to start implementing solutions to problems that only a few years ago belonged to the realm of science fiction. Mr. Perez will reveal why artificial intelligence is the present and the future.
The Artificial Intelligence Breakthroughs that are Changing the World
Achieving Deep Impact with “State-of-the-art” Deep Learning
Deep learning has enabled many practical applications of artificial intelligence in today’s organizations. Deep learning breaks down tasks in ways that makes all kinds of machine aids seem possible, even likely. Driverless cars, better image recognition, more effective medical diagnoses, even better movie recommendations, are all here today. Mr. Perez will identify what organizations need to do today to embrace the future, starting with the basics: empowering their employees and turbocharging the organization’s data strategy. Once these two important tasks are accomplished, organizations can then launch pilots for the most promising opportunities, leveraging “state of the art” cases from today’s global innovators such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Tesla. Mr. Perez will show organizations how to kick start their deep learning transformation.
Achieving Deep Impact with “State-of-the-art” Deep Learning
Managing the Upcoming Tsunami of Unstructured Data with Artificial Intelligence
The Internet of Things (IoT) explosion will see 20.8 billion connected devices deployed by 2020. The volumes of data generated will become a tsunami that firms will need to transform into actionable information. Unfortunately, most firms only look at the easy information they can get from structured data while ignoring their unstructured data, which accounts for 90 percent of content generated globally, making unstructured data a tremendous source of untapped value. Artificial Intelligence is making it possible and affordable to sift through and find meaning in vast amounts of unstructured data obtained from video, audio, emails, logs, social media posts and IoT devices. All of this data can bring about enormous benefits; Mr. Perez will show organizations how to reap these benefits today.
Managing the Upcoming Tsunami of Unstructured Data with Artificial Intelligence
Neuro what? Neuromorphic Computing and the Quest to Build an Artificial Brain
Neuromorphic Computing (NC) emulates the human brain’s neural structure and operation as it attempts to match a human's flexibility and ability to learn from unstructured stimuli with the energy efficiency displayed by our brain. NC has grown at the intersection of diverse research disciplines, including computational neuroscience, machine learning, microelectronics, and computer architecture, among others. It seeks to produce a cognition machine that not just reaches decisions, but memorizes information and even deduces facts. Mr. Perez will enthrall your audience with the possibilities created by computers that will behave as though they were originally engineered for the tasks they are executing, rather than as general-purpose computers taking their instructions from electronic programs.
Neuro what? Neuromorphic Computing and the Quest to Build an Artificial Brain
Trade Wars and their Impact on Financial Markets already influenced by Artificial Intelligence (AI)
China and the US are locked in an escalating trade battle. The US increased tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products. In turn, China imposed tariff hikes on $60 billion of US goods. The IMF has said that taxing all trade between these two economies would cause some $455 billion in GDP to evaporate; that would be a loss larger than South Africa’s economy. Financial markets are already wobbling with each new trade-war headline. Even so, equities in both China and the U.S. are up on the year, suggesting investors are still betting a deal will be done. What would happen if they are wrong? Would this increase the likelihood of a “flash crash” in financial markets that are increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence-driven electronic trading systems?
Trade Wars and their Impact on Financial Markets already influenced by Artificial Intelligence (AI)
What the Boeing 737 Groundings can teach us about Technology and Automation
Only days after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the U.S. FAA grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8, joining airlines and governments worldwide in an effort to guarantee passenger safety, just months after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 involved the same model. Reports point to Boeing’s new automated flight-control system, known as MCAS, as the culprit. However, an initial review of the design, certification and deployment process for the 737 MAX shows an over-reliance on untested technology, potential conflicts of interest between regulators and airlines, and lack of proper documentation and training. Is it still safe to fly? Mr. Edgar Perez will provide an insider’s look at how this dysfunctional process evolved, resulting in 346 casualties within five months, and what your organization can do to identify technology and operational challenges that can compromise its viability.
What the Boeing 737 Groundings can teach us about Technology and Automation
Is the Global Race to Achieve Quantum Supremacy Coming to an End?
Google recently announced that their most advanced quantum computer, a radically new design to manipulate and process information, has achieved “quantum supremacy” for the first time. The technology giant's Sycamore quantum processor was able to perform an incredibly complex task in 200 seconds, a feat that would take the world's fastest supercomputers 10,000 years to complete. The ultimate development and commercialization of this technology will tremendously accelerate difficult tasks across all industries, including financial services, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and the upcoming space exploration. Are we really there yet? Mr. Edgar Perez will enlighten your audience with the latest head-turning business applications of this revolutionary technology.
Is the Global Race to Achieve Quantum Supremacy Coming to an End?
Video
How Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence will Change your World
Machine Learning and Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence’s most successful approaches to date, have dramatically improved speech recognition, visual object recognition, object detection and many other domains, bringing remarkable opportunities for firms in financial services, manufacturing, energy, pharma and defense.The Leaderonomics Show
Edgar is widely regarded as the preeminent speaker and networker in the specialized area of high-frequency trading. He is author of The Speed Traders, An Insider's Look at the New High-Frequency Trading Phenomenon That is Transforming the Investing World, published by McGraw-Hill Inc. (2011) and currently being translated into Chinese and Portuguese. He is course director of The Speed Traders Workshop 2012, How High Frequency Traders Leverage Profitable Strategies to Find Alpha in Equities, Options, Futures and FX, and was Adjunct Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. Edgar was a vice president at Citigroup, a senior consultant at IBM, and a consultant at McKinsey & Co. in New York City. He is one of the great business networkers and motivators on the lecture circuit; he is available worldwide for the following speaking engagements: Present and Future of High-Frequency Trading, The Real Story behind the "Flash Crash", Networking for Financial Executives, and Business Networking for Success. Edgar resides in the New York City area and is an accomplished salsa and hustle dancer.Thank you very much for your participation in Berlin at the European Institute CEO Roundtable. Your presentation was fascinating, a really informative session. The delegates seemed to hang o ... keep reading European Institute
Your presentation was the real highlight of the Emerging Markets Investments Summit. You clearly have the connections in the industry and are very well connected.
Thrilled to have your participation at this year’s Global Financial Leadership Conference.”
Excellent intense masterclass to help me brush up on Deep Learning. From applications and models to optimization and Python code, CNNs, RNNs, etc.
Edgar Perez is THE expert on high-frequency trading
I have had the pleasure of working with many of the industry’s smartest minds. Edgar ranks among the best speakers I have ever encountered. His keynotes on disruptive technologies have influenced industry leaders attending our forums in many parts of the world. In just one hour, attendees gain a fresh perspective on the major trends that are transforming the world, one qubit at a time.
It was such a pleasure to have you participate in our conference. The feedback was great and the information you shared with the audience was invaluable. Once again, thank you for your contribution in making the event a success.
