IAQF - Board of Directors

Leslie Rahl, Director Emeritus

Leslie Rahl is the Founder and Managing Partner of Capital Market Risk Advisors (CMRA), the pre-eminent risk management firm providing consulting and litigation support services to major US and international financial services companies and institutional investors. She has advised numerous hedge funds, funds of funds, asset management companies, derivatives companies, investment and commercial banks, insurance companies, public pension funds, and other market participants on a wide variety of risk management, governance and compliance-related issues, including developing and implementing risk management, hedging, valuation and compliance policies and procedures, reviewing and advising on appropriate risk governance, benchmarking existing programs against industry best practices, advising clients in complex trading strategies, including options and other derivatives. She has also provided expert services in connection with a number of investigations and litigations involving various securities, commodities and derivatives-related matters. Prior to founding CMRA, Ms. Rahl spent 19 years at Citibank, including nine years as co-head of Citibank’s Derivatives Group in North America. She launched its caps and collars business in 1983 as an extension of the proprietary options arbitrage portfolio she ran and was a pioneer in the development of the swaps and derivatives business.

As a pioneer in the derivatives and structured finance businesses and a long-time advisor to all types of financial services companies, Ms. Rahl has a unique cross-industry perspective. Ms. Rahl is the author of Hedge Fund Risk Transparency: Unravelling the Complex and Controversial Debate, published in March 2003 by Risk Books, and the editor of Risk Budgeting: A New Approach to Investing, published in November 2000 by Risk Books. Her articles have appeared in a wide range of publications. She is a regular speaker at conferences and symposia and frequently quoted in the press.

Ms. Rahl was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Finance by Treasury and Risk magazine in June 2010, one of the Top 50 Women in Finance by Euromoney in 1997, and was profiled in both the fifth and tenth-anniversary issues of Risk Magazine. She was listed in “Who’s Who in Derivatives” by Risk Magazine and was profiled in Fortune’s “On the Rise“ and Institutional Investor’s “The Next Generation of Financial Leaders.”

Ms. Rahl is on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), and the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE). She is a member of the hedge fund committee of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA). She was a Director of the International Swaps Dealers Association (ISDA) for five years, chaired the IAFE’s Investor Risk Committee (IRC), and is a former Director of Fannie Mae the MIT Investment Management Company and the New York State Common Retirement Board.

Capital Market Risk Advisors