Acuity Knowledge Partners

Utpal has been with Acuity Knowledge Partners for over 10 years. He has extensive experience in investment banking, financial modeling and commercial lending research services. He is currently part of Project and Transition team. He has widespread experience in managing pilot accounts, on-boarding new clients, and ensuring knowledge transfer & transition. Along with Financial Spreading and Covenant Monitoring in SME and Large Corporate space, he also has in-depth experience in Leveraged Lending and Asset Based Lending. He is an MBA of Finance and a Bachelor of Science from Calcutta University.

Rajul heads the commercial lending practice at Acuity Knowledge Partners and has been with the firm for over 15 years. She is responsible for strategic planning, delivery oversight and management, quality assurance and supporting the innovation and technology initiatives in Lending. Rajul has extensive experience in investment banking analytics and commercial lending research services. Apart from banks, the teams she oversees also have in-depth experience in working across different lending products, processes and systems for Fortune 100 companies, SMEs and real-estate businesses. She holds a Master of Finance and Control, and a Bachelor of Commerce from Delhi University.

Subhro has been with Acuity Knowledge Partners for over 8 years. He has 14+ years of extensive experience in credit analysis in the lending, counterparty and credit research domain. Subhro manages transition of new clients encompassing the credit analysis function across different lending lines of business. He has extensive work experience in banking products, process and systems across the lending value chain for global as well as regional corporate and commercial banks. He holds a Master of Commerce degree from Calcutta University.

Fauzaan manages multiple Fund Marketing Services teams in Colombo focusing on the Digital Marketing practice. He has over 19 years of total experience in the software and capital markets industries. He currently manages the end to end delivery of all digital marketing accounts at Acuity Knowledge Partners. Prior to this, he played the role of head of PMO in Quantitative Research. Fauzaan holds a Masters in Project Management specialising in Business Administration and Bachelor of Science (hons) in Information Systems.

Vimal is a fund marketing professional with over 11 years of experience in capital markets and the fund marketing industry. He is experienced in project transition, setting up and managing core functional teams supporting RFPs/RFIs, consultant databases and, preparation of marketing materials. He has worked with several asset managers at Acuity Knowledge Partners to streamline their processes, helping them implement industry best practices to achieve process efficiencies. Vimal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance.

Narendra has been with Acuity Knowledge Partners (Acuity) since 2007. He has over 10 years experience in mutual funds, ETFs reporting and derivatives trading. At Acuity, he is responsible for project transition and setting-up high-performing teams to support client reports, factsheets, pitchbooks, performance reports, and investment writing for global asset and wealth managers. He has worked with several asset managers to streamline their processes, helping them implement industry best practices and achieve process efficiencies resulting in significant cost reduction. Prior to joining Acuity, he worked as Eurodollar trader. He holds master’s degree in management from Bangalore University.

Ramesh has over 19 years of experience in global capital markets – research and investment banking. Prior to joining Acuity Knowledge Partners, Ramesh worked with the offshore research and analytics units of Crisil and iGate, managing sell-side research and investment banking teams for global clients. He started his career as an investment banker at Ind Global Financial Trust (currently part of Ernst & Young’s corporate finance practice in India), advising companies on M&A and capital raising. He holds an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in Technology.

Rahul manages the Investment Compliance division, and is responsible for expanding and stabilizing the investment compliance team and enhancing the client experience. He has 10 years of experience in asset management compliance. He previously worked with firms including AXA, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan Asset Management.

Jalaj heads the Compliance Analytics team, with experience in anti-money laundering, customer due diligence, and market abuse prevention. He has worked in the areas of compliance, trading surveillance, and financial crime and information security and risk analytics. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons.) degree in Electronics and Communication.

Stevi has over 9 years of experience in portfolio analytics, quantitative analysis, portfolio optimization, portfolio allocation, statistical arbitrage modeling, multi-factor modeling, and exchange-traded funds. He is well versed in EViews, MATLAB, Origin, SAS, Adobe Photoshop, PowerDirector, Mathematica, LabVIEW, C++ and Fortran. He holds an M.Sc and B.Sc in Physics.

Priya has over 14 years of work experience, of which eleven years were in developing and maintaining fixed income benchmarks and multi-product indices. She has working knowledge of commodities, ABS, and equity indices. She holds a Master of Economics from the University of Southern California and Bachelor of Economics from the University of Mumbai.

Zohair heads Acuity Knowledge Partners' Forensic Analysis business, and is responsible for product innovation in the area of quality of earnings, corporate governance, and financial health checks. He has over 20 years’ experience in accounting and finance.

Shikha heads Acuity Knowledge Partners' editorial, design and publishing services, managing all client accounts in this vertical. She has 16 years of experience in financial editing. Before joining Acuity, she worked with Goldman Sachs as a Series 16-qualified Supervisory Analyst and Editor. She also set up and managed its 10-member content management team in Bangalore. Her previous work at JPMorgan included reviewing equity research reports, and she focused on credit and industry and company research reports during her stint at Crisil Research (an S&P company). Shikha holds an MBA in Finance.

Venkatesh leads the Capital Markets Technology Solutions sub group under the Quantitative Services practice at Acuity Knowledge Partners. He primarily works with multiple clients providing support for developing automation tools/solutions aimed at enhancing productivity/efficiencies of the existing processes and to reduce the turnaround time and cost. He has over 15 years of experience in delivering solutions based on MS-Office Automations, Windows & Web Applications development and database project across multiple industries and service lines.

Sriram leads the Derivatives/Mathematical Modelling sub group under the Quantitative Services practice at Acuity Knowledge Partners. He primarily works with banks providing support for derivatives pricing/valuation, model research/enhancements, financial market risk analysis, corporate hedging solutions, and pitchbook production. He has over 8 years of experience across service lines, including derivatives modeling, model risk validation, data analytics, statistical modeling and software development.

Ramesh heads Data Management services at Acuity Knowledge Partners, responsible for driving projects on data collection, cleansing, maintenance, analytics and visualization to help asset managers and banks form informed business insights. He has rich experience across different asset classes and multiple service lines, including operations, market research, data analytics, and financial services.

Sumit heads Market Research Services at Acuity Knowledge Partners, responsible for managing innovation, market expansion strategy and continued enhancement of client returns. He has over 15 years of experience across multiple service lines, including consulting, market research, data analytics, strategic and business research, and financial services. He is an ESOMAR member.

Prabaldeep leads the strategy research and consulting practice at Acuity Knowledge Partners. He has over 13 years of experience working on assignments related to growth strategy formulation, go-to-market strategy, market entry and expansion (buy/build options), benchmarking, business transformation, process improvement, and more. He works closely with management, strategy, corporate development, competitive intelligence, innovation and procurement teams of clients across multiple industries.

Manish heads strategy research practice for consulting & corporate clients at Acuity Knowledge Partners. He has over 15 years of experience across consulting, corporates, investment banking and other professional services firms. Manish works closely with consulting partners and key decision makers to enable value creation in consulting assignments. He is seasoned in on-boarding new clients and takes ownership of setting up new teams, delivery structure and expanding product/regional coverage. Manish has been involved in various company level strategic initiatives.

Shubha has over 12 years of experience in statistical data modeling, financial data analysis and analysis of data in market research. She has a strong grasp of statistical tools – SAS, R, SPSS, S-PLUS, RapidMiner and MS-Excel. She holds a Master of Science (Statistics) and Bachelor of Science (Statistics, Mathematics and Computer Science).

Pradeepa has over 13 years of work experience, including 11 years in fixed income and credit research. She heads the fixed income and credit research teams across our global delivery locations. Pradeepa has extensive experience in setting up, scaling, and managing buy-side and sell-side client engagements, and working closely with clients to meet their evolving needs and exceed their expectations. Her asset class expertise includes focus on complex high-yield, distressed and defunct issuers; and US Municipals. Prior to joining Acuity Knowledge Partners, she was an associate in the audit and business advisory wing of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Pradeepa is a Chartered Accountant and holds a bachelor’s degree in Commerce.

Sumit heads the Private Equity & Consulting vertical at Acuity Knowledge Partners. He also oversees the China Delivery Center. Sumit is responsible for strategy formulation and implementation, innovation, and business development, in addition to providing oversight to delivery groups. He has more than 18 years of experience across diverse lines of services, including Private Equity, Consulting, Market Research, Investment Banking, and Commercial Banking. In his previous roles at Acuity Knowledge Partners, Sumit was instrumental in setting up an Investment Banking vertical and multiple other services. He also led the business turnaround of a subsidiary company as its COO. He is a Chartered Accountant and a national rank holder in the foundation level of ICAI.

As Head of Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) vertical, Kumail oversees the engagement management and delivery framework for Due Diligence operations, Transaction Monitoring and AML Analytics. He is also responsible to strengthen the vertical by recommending optimal business solution to clients and technology oversight for FCC vertical. Kumail has 25+ years of prolific experience in KYC/AML operations, back office operations, process migration, business analysis and system implementation, process deliveries and team building. He puts strong focus on identifying risk in a process and believes in leveraging his IT know-how for automating operations.

Jehan is global head of Compliance Services, serving buy- and sell-side clients. He was previously the head of global projects and transitions — equity, and led all inbound scoping requests and delivery solutions for buy- and sell-side clients. Jehan managed the setup and transition of several large engagements, including lift-and-shift of processes for clients across multiple work streams. He has over 17 years of experience in investment research and analysis, compliance, project management, audit control and systems implementation. He has led large projects and teams across multiple work streams and global locations and is a Certified Investment Advisor (Colombo Stock Exchange)

Tanya heads Forensic and Central Compliance practices. She has over 15 years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining Acuity Knowledge Partners, she worked at Goldman Sachs as Vice President,GSAM Compliance as Bangalore team manager, line compliance officer for the India businesses, and lead for forensic and marketing compliance initiatives. Tanya has also handled marketing strategy and communications at GSAM and market research at Thomson Financial. Tanya holds a Bachelor of Business Management (Marketing) from Bangalore University.

Manish is the delivery manager and subject matter expert for the forensic testing compliance practice. He has over 8 years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining Acuity Knowledge Partners he worked as an associate with Goldman Sachs - GSAM Compliance. He was part of the global forensics team and was part of the marketing and portfolio management compliance team. Manish was also part of the controls management team for the asset & wealth management team at JP Morgan and was part of the HSBC KYC remediation team for multiple lines of business.

Manjunath has over 13 years of experience in financial services and compliance offshoring in the areas of know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering, transaction monitoring, email surveillance and foreign exchange. He previously worked at Deutsche Bank, Amicorp India Pvt. Ltd. and Thomson Reuters. At Acuity Knowledge Partners, Manjunath has been part of multiple engagement and is responsible for delivering KYC projects for the firm’s compliance clientele globally. Manjunath is a MBA in finance and marketing from Bangalore University.

Wilfred Peter has over 11+ years of experience in compliance and Investment banking having worked for firms including State Street Global Advisors and HSBC. His expertise spans across compliance and risk sector, focusing on compliance reviews of marketing/advertising materials and social media contents. At Acuity Knowledge Partners he is part of the central compliance team and specializes in marketing material review and social media reviews. Wilfred is a graduate (Bachelors of commerce) and hold a degree from St Joseph’s College of Commerce Bengaluru.

Rajesh heads the firm’s Central Compliance Services business unit and is responsible for setting up new central compliance practices managing client relationships, and ensuring overall delivery for the firm’s compliance clientele. He has over 13 years of experience in financial services and compliance offshoring. He previously worked in the compliance function of large global banks.

Puneet Prakash is the product head of the firm’s Compliance Services business unit. He is responsible for strategizing and creating optimal solutions for the firm’s Compliance clientele, globally. He has over 15 years of experience in financial services and knowledge offshoring. He has previously worked with firms such as TCS and WNS. Puneet holds an MBA (Finance & Marketing) from the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode and a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, India

Sailaja Devireddy has 16 years of work experience and heads the Fund Marketing Services (FMS) division at Acuity Knowledge Partners. She specializes in the capital markets domain, including equity markets, fund solutions, and fund marketing support for asset managers and ETFs. She has vast experience in transitioning and leading global teams. She is actively involved in account management, client engagement and project management of large teams that provide end-to-end support to global asset managers on a variety of FMS activities. She is a qualified Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary

Chamara leads the Quant Equity Strategy practice at Acuity Knowledge Partners. Additionally, he oversees projects and assignments for Quantitative Services in Colombo. Chamara has over 14 years of experience in capital market research outsourcing across equity, fixed income, and quants. He currently mentors several teams on end-to-end equity strategy development from ideation and quantitative analysis/interpretation to professional research writing. Prior to this, he handled the scoping and execution of new equity and credit businesses at Acuity Knowledge Partners, Colombo. He has provided offshore analyst support to equity and credit teams covering North America for large sell-side firms. Chamara is a CFA Charterholder and holds a bachelor’s degree in Science.

Pedro Armstrong is a Director at Acuity Knowledge Partners and leads business development efforts in the Americas for the Corporate and Commercial Banking, Buy-side, and Sell-side segments. He is responsible for managing key client engagements and works in partnership with capital market firms to provide customized solutions across research and analytics support, origination and lending support, and marketing and compliance support. He has been with the organization for 12 years, serving in various roles across Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, and now the US. Prior to joining Acuity Knowledge Partners, he was a Central Bank Regulator at the Central Bank of Barbados. Pedro, who is a British Chevening Scholar, holds a Master’s degree (honors) in Banking and International Finance from Cass Business School, City University, London.

Miriam has over 15 years of experience in providing high quality sell-side and economic research. She is currently Director & country head for Costa Rica and is responsible for managing key client relationships and delivering high-quality investment research services for leading sell-side and buy-side firms. Prior to joining Acuity Knowledge Partners, she worked at Banco Del Caribe in Venezuela, where she led the Strategy and Financial Planning team. She has carried out extensive consultancy work in strategy, economics, and finance in various Latin American countries including Venezuela, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. Miriam also serves as Board Director of the Costa Rican American Chamber of Commerce and is ranked among the top 100 Business Women in Latin America. She is a CFA charter holder and holds an MBA in Finance and Economics from INCAE and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Venezuela. She also holds a certification in Business Excellence in Strategy, Innovation, and Negotiation from Columbia University.

Chanakya Dissanayake leads the investment research vertical at Acuity and counts over 16 years with the firm. In addition, Chanakya manages the Colombo delivery center that provides investment research, quant – data science , commercial lending and FMS services. Investment research vertical is responsible for the buy-side, sell-side and private wealth management clientele that obtains equity and fixed income research from Acuity. Chanakya is a CFA charterholder and a fellow member of ACCA (UK) and CIMA (UK).

Anish has been with Acuity Knowledge Partners for over 13 years and presently heads the Investment Banking vertical. He is based out of our Gurgaon office and oversees delivery teams and client engagements for various bulge-bracket banks, mid-size banks, regional banks, advisory and boutique firms across M&A, Industry Coverage, Debt Capital Markets, Equity Capital Markets, Loan Syndications and Leveraged Finance. During his tenure, he also set up a shared services center for one of his clients in India. Anish is a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and has done his Bachelors in Commerce from Delhi University.

Adrian leads Business Development across Investment Banking, Private Equity and Consulting clients in EMEA and APAC. He has 20 years' experience working in the financial services industry, having spent 13 years working in Equity Capital Markets for Rothschild and RBS, before moving to Acuity Knowledge Partners in 2013. He has a deep knowledge of financial markets, having originated and executed over USD50bn of ECM transactions across a wide range of sectors, products and geographies. He has extensive experience working with and advising the majority of Investment Banking coverage and product groups, and leading global Private Equity firms. Adrian holds a MA (Hons Oxon) in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.

Niladri currently heads the Risk Management Services team at Acuity Knowledge Partners. He has more than 12 years of experience in roles spanning risk analytics, quantitative research, and general management.

Marie Filotti heads APAC Business Development at Acuity Knowledge Partners and is based in Hong Kong. She joined the firm in 2018 after 13 years in Investment Banking and Capital Markets, mainly at Nomura (previously Lehman Brothers), and also worked on the corporate side, having run Investor Relations at a China-based ASX-listed gas company. She uses her experience in the industry to advise our clients on best practices in implementation of engagements across all sectors. Marie holds a BA from Yale University and a Masters in Finance from Sciences-Po Paris.