Mr. Smith has 25 years of management and corporate finance experience in Asia and the Middle East. He has worked for Citibank, a Thai-based boutique investment bank, as well as leading his own corporate financial advisory services firm. He has particular expertise in sell-side deal structuring and transactions, introducing clients to over a hundred banks, corporations, angel investors, and private equity funds, while providing provided advice on projects valued at more than US$250 million. He has also arranged joint ventures in several countries in Asia.

Ark Alternative Advisors (Ark) is one of the very few independent placement agent specialized in alternative investment funds, primarily focusing on Private Equity funds. Mr. Tanahashi founded Ark in 2010, spinning out from Ant Capital Partners where he headed the Investor Relations team. Prior to joining Ant Capital, he worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management Tokyo office promoting alternative products to institutional investors. He started his career at Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Bank in 1996 where he specialized in pension portfolio management, and was seconded to Research Institute for Pensions and Policies on Aging (Government Agency funded by GPIF) for 3 years during his assignment.

Mr. Osha is the senior equity analyst in charge of overseeing solar energy research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. During his 20-year career in equity research Joe has worked in a variety of industries and locations. He began his career as an equity analyst with Baring Securities in 1992, in Tokyo. Prior to taking up his current role, he was head of Asia ex-Japan equity research for BAML, based in Hong Kong. He joined Bank of America in 1995 as an equity analyst based in Tokyo. He returned to the United States in 1997 to cover semiconductor stocks, and worked in that capacity in New York and San Francisco until 2007. He relocated to Hong Kong in the fall of 2007 as a member of the research management team.

Amiyatosh graduated from the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, in 2005 with a Ph.D. in Finance. He also holds a PGDM (MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow and B.S. (Electrical Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Prior to joining the academia, Amiyatosh worked as an Assistant Vice President at ICICI Ltd., a leading bank of India. He also has consulting experience in the banking sector. Amiyatosh has published extensively in the top journals in Finance and Economics on topics covering a wide spectrum of finance. His main research interests are in banking, risk-management, investments and credit risk. He was awarded the Lehman Brother’s 2003 fellowship for Research Excellence in Finance for his dissertation work on risk-management. He was awarded the Bank One Chair in 2008-2009 by the Ross School of Business in recognition of his research contributions. He has won numerous grants from the FDIC for his work on banking and the connection between the banking and the real sector of the economy. His research has been widely cited by academics and policymakers. Amiyatosh’s current research focuses on mortgage-backed-securities and incentive conflicts in the financial sector. Amiyatosh’s main teaching interests are in the fields of corporate financial policies and firm valuation. He has taught courses at the undergraduate, MBA, Executive Education and PhD levels. He has been nominated for teaching excellence awards by both MBA and PhD students at Ross.